Researchers say changes in stride can ease arthritis pain
Slightly altering your stride while walking could considerably ease pain caused by wear-and-tear knee arthritis, a new study says.
Foot positioning while walking can reduce stress on a person's knee joint, researchers reported Tuesday in The Lancet Rheumatology.
People trained to angle their feet slightly inward or outward from their natural alignment experienced slower degeneration of the cartilage cushion inside their aching knees, results show.
They also reported greater reductions in knee pain and better knee function after a year, researchers said.
"Altogether, our findings suggest that helping patients find their best foot angle to reduce stress on their knees may offer an easy and fairly inexpensive way to address early-stage osteoarthritis," said co-lead researcher Valentina Mazzoli, an assistant professor of radiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City.
This strategy could lower patients' reliance on painkillers and delay the need for knee replacement surgery, Mazzoli added in a news release.
For the study, researchers recruited 68 people with knee osteoarthritis and recorded their gait while walking on a treadmill. A computer program simulated their walking patterns and calculated the maximum stress they were placing on their knees.
The research team also generated computer models of four new foot positions angled inward or outward by 5 or 10 degrees and estimated which would best reduce stress on each person's knees.
Participants then were randomly divided into two groups. Half were trained in six sessions to walk with the foot angle ideal to them, and the other half were told to continue walking normally.
Overall, those who adjusted their gait reduced maximum loading in their knees by 4%, while those who kept their normal stride increased loading by more than 3%.
Further, those taught the new foot position experienced a 2.5-point reduction on a 10-point pain scale, equivalent to the effect of over-the-counter painkillers like NSAIDs and acetaminophen, researchers said.
"These results highlight the importance of personalizing treatment instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach to osteoarthritis," Mazzoli said. "While this strategy may sound challenging, recent advances in detecting the motion of different body parts using artificial intelligence may make it easier and faster than ever before."
AI software that estimates joint loading using smartphone videos is now available, allowing doctors to perform a gait analysis without specialized lab equipment, researchers noted.
The team next plans to test whether those AI tools can indeed help identify the best walking method for knee arthritis patients, Mazzoli said. They also plan to expand their study to include people with obesity.
More information
The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons has more about knee arthritis.
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