RUNNING DOES NOT CAUSE OA (Orthopedics This Week)
Is osteoarthritis (OA), the most common joint ailment afflicting middle-age and older adults, caused by running? According to Rebekah Marcarelli, writing for Headlines and Global News, past studies on elite male runners have suggested that such a link could exist.
Grace Hsiao-Wei Lo, M.D., M.S. of Baylor College of Medicine, decided to find out. She noted that, “Since running is a common leisure physical activity that involves repetitive loading, which could be harmful to the joint, I was particularly interested in studying how habitual running relates to the development of knee OA.”
Lo and her fellow researchers looked at the records of 2,683 study participants with a mean age of 64.5 years and a BMI (body mass index) of 28.6. Twenty-nine percent of the participants said they had run regularly at some point in their lives. Just under 6% of the study participants were female.
Researchers gave all of the participants an X-ray, a symptom assessment measurement and asked each of them to complete the Lifetime Physical Activity Questionnaire. That questionnaire identified the top physical activities they had participated in during their ...
