Simple change in walking style relieves knee arthritis pain as effectively as drugs

Scientists are reporting that a simple adjustment to how people walk can relieve knee arthritis pain as effectively as prescription drugs, while also slowing the deterioration of cartilage.

Nearly a quarter of people over the age of 40 experience painful osteoarthritis due to degrading joint-cushioning cartilage, and there is currently no way of reversing this damage. The only option is to manage pain with medication, and eventually, joint replacement.

Now, researchers from the University of Utah, New York University, and Stanford are demonstrating the potential for another option: gait retraining.

By making a small adjustment to the angle of their foot while walking, participants in a year-long randomized control trial experienced pain relief equivalent to medication.

Critically, those participants also showed less knee cartilage degradation over that period as compared to a group that received a placebo treatment.

Published on August 13 in The Lancet Rheumatology, these findings come from the first placebo-controlled study to demonstrate the effectiveness of a biomechanical intervention for osteoarthritis.

“We’ve known that for people with osteoarthritis, higher loads in their knee accelerate progression, and that changing the foot angle can reduce knee load,” said Scott Uhlrich, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Utah. “But there have not been randomized, placebo-controlled studies to show that they’re effective.”