Trunk and pelvis motion in subjects with knee OA.


A biomechanical analysis of trunk and pelvis motion during gait in subjects with knee osteoarthritis compared to control subjects.
Linley H., Sled E., Culham E., Deluzio K. Clinical Biomechanics, 2010; 25, 1003 – 1010.

Knee adduction moment, which is related to joint loading, has been reported to be reduced in subjects who tend to lean their trunk over the stance extremity during walking gait. Research has shown that adduction moment might be a good representative of knee OA progression. This led to an interest in studying trunk lean as a possible mechanism of reducing knee adduction moment and therefore knee medial compartment loading in patients with knee OA. Current findings however seem to be unclear. Linley et al. decided to conduct this study to analyse frontal plane trunk and pelvis biomechanics, as well as knee and hip frontal kinematics, in control and OA subjects to determine whether knee OA subjects lean their trunk farther over stance limb to reduce joint loading. 80 subjects (40 controls and 40 OA) were involved in the study.
Results showed that knee and hip adduction moments were significantly higher in subjects with knee OA compared to controls. In regards to knee joint, this is in agreement in previous research, while findings on hip joint seem to be contraindicatory. No significant difference between groups has been found in pelvis and trunk biomechanics which did not fully support author’s hypotheses that subjects with knee OA lean their trunks farther over their stance limb. Nevertheless, principal component analyses revealed altered gait patterns in both the thorax and the pelvis throughout the stance cycle of gait in knee OA subjects. Finally, PCA found out that participants with knee OA tended to use trunk and pelvis more than as a single unit as opposed to controls. 
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