How important is knee protection? Knee injury can increase the risk of osteoarthritis

According to a December 24 report from Medscape, a new study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine states that young people with knee injuries are more likely to develop osteoarthritis in the future. A person with a knee injury between the ages of 25 and 34 has a six-fold increased risk of developing osteoarthritis within 11 years.

Dr Barbara Snoeker, MD, of the Department of Clinical Orthopedics, Lund University School of Medicine, Sweden, pointed out that previous studies have pointed out that adolescent and adult knee injury is an important risk factor for osteoarthritis. However, most of these studies are based on retrospective analysis based on patient recall, and the results are more error-prone. At the same time, these studies mainly focused on cruciate ligament and meniscal laceration, and paid less attention to other types of knee injuries. They pay little attention to young people and cannot make reliable estimates of the magnitude of their risk.

To fill the gap in the younger population, Snoeker extracted medical consultation data from 1.3 million residents from Skane Health Register in Sweden for this study. Between 1999 and 2007, a total of 5,500 young people between the ages of 25 and 34 had knee injuries, and they did not have arthritis themselves. Researchers compared these people to other 143,000 people of the same age without knee injuries.

It was found that 11.3% of people with knee injuries after 19 years were diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis, while only 4.0% of those without injuries were diagnosed. The risk of osteoarthritis varies according to the type of injury, with cruciate ligament injury, meniscus tear, and intra-articular fractures being the highest risk factors. Among the uninjured people, the factors most likely to cause osteoarthritis are genetic susceptibility and obesity.

After adjusting for other factors such as age, gender, income, diabetes, obesity and other factors, the data analysis indicated that the risk of osteoarthritis increased by 5.7 times after 11 years compared with the uninjured, among which 5.3 times were male and 6.5 times female. People under the age of 30 have an increased risk of 7.6 times, while those over the age of 30 have a risk of 4.7 times.

After cruciate ligament injury, the risk of osteoarthritis increased to 8.2 times, the meniscus tear was 7.6 times, and the upper tibial fracture was 7.0 times. There are many other structural injuries, joint dislocations, cartilage tears, and collateral ligament injuries. The risks are all increased to more than 5 times. On average, people with cruciate ligament injury develop osteoarthritis 16 months earlier than the average person, while meniscus tears take 12 months, and the fracture difference is 8 months.

Daily exercise for osteoarthritis patients is necessary, as long as they can move, they need to be active, often lying in bed will be more unsuitable for joint friction caused by exercise. Make different suggestions according to the degree of the patient's disease: people with inconvenient knees should do squatting positions less and walk more often; if there is a problem with the lumbar spine, they can't go far, they should walk less each time, but the frequency can be more frequent. Walk a few more times a short distance. During the exercise, pay attention to the warmth of the knee, and it will often increase as soon as it gets cold; less climbing steps and less heavy lifting are all actions that put a lot of pressure on the knee.