WALKING MECHANICS DIFFERS BETWEEN ASYMPTOMATIC INDIVIDUALS WITH OR WITHOUT MEDIAL KNEE FULL-THICKNESS CARTILAGE LOSS: DATA FROM THE LAUSANNE KNEE STUDY (LKS).

Authors

L C Pereira, S M Shokouhyan, P Margain, J Runhaar, S Bierma-Zeinstra, B M Jolles, P Omoumi, J Favre

Published in

Osteoarthritis imaging. Volume 6 Suppl 1. Pages 100440.

Abstract

Walking mechanics is an important factor of knee osteoarthritis, but its relationship with structural lesions and symptoms remains unclear. Studying asymptomatic individuals with MRI-defined full-thickness cartilage loss (FTCL) may help isolate gait alterations associated with structural disease rather than pain.
To compare walking mechanics between asymptomatic individuals without FTCL at the knee and those with FTCL in the medial femorotibial compartment.
A randomly selected knee for 204 asymptomatic participants of the Lausanne Knee Study was classified as medial FTCL (n = 16; 7 females; median age 59 years) or no FTCL (n = 188; 113 females; median age 56 years) based on a magnetic resonance exam. All participants underwent a three-dimensional gait analysis using a marker-based motion capture system. Walking kinetics and kinematics were calculated using a previously validated method. Parameters were compared between groups using Mann-Whitney U tests. Effect size was measured using the rank-biserial correlation (r).
A consistent and coherent pattern of statistically significant differences of small effect size (0.004 ≤ p ≤0.043; 0.14 ≤ r ≤ 0.20) was observed between groups. During early stance, the medial FTCL group exhibited a larger knee flexion moment, a larger ankle dorsiflexion angle, and a lower fore ground reaction force. During midstance, the knee adduction moment was larger in the medial FTCL group. During late stance, the medial FTCL group showed larger knee and hip flexed angle, a lower hip extension moment, and a lower vertical ground reaction force.
This study highlighted a pattern of differences between asymptomatic individuals with medial FTCL and no FTCL. This original result on asymptomatic extends prior literature on symptomatic OA, enhancing our overall understanding of the tripartite interplay among gait alterations, symptoms, and structural lesions.

PMID:
42622171
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 20 Aug 2026.

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