Environmental Impacts on Knee Osteoarthritis and It’s Sustainable Management using Therapeutic Agents

Abstract

Osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee is the most common form of joint disease. It is one of the major causes of impaired function that reduces quality of life (QOL) worldwide. To evaluate the association between Environmental Impacts (weather, occupation, posture, age, sex, obesity, exercise, sports, diet, demographic, joint injury, hormone, bone density etc.) and knee pain among individuals with osteoarthritis (OA) (n=299). This prospective study evaluated men and women, aged 40 to 80yr, participating in a community-based, osteoarthritis exercise study (June 2012–June 2016). Weekly selfreported pain scores were collected using a visual analogue scale. Statistical tests, including regression and correlation analyses, were conducted. P values<0.001 were considered significant. To compare the effectiveness of sustainable management using different therapeutic agents (swimming exercise, quadriceps stretching exercise, mobilization exercise, deep transverse friction massage with hot pack). The mean temperature was 23°C with a low of 4°C and a high of 40°C. Most associations explored produced non-significant findings. However, among women with knee OA, higher pain was significantly associated with days of rising barometric pressure (P<0.001). While some associations were suggestive of a relationship, largely these findings indicate that weather is quite modestly, if at all, associated with pain from OA. Some occupational activities increase the risk of knee OA, although the influences of publication bias and heterogeneity are important limitations of this study. Both aerobic walking and home based quadriceps strengthening exercise reduce pain and disability from knee osteoarthritis but no difference between them was found on indirect comparison. Obesity was also significantly associated with knee OA There was no statistically significant interaction effect between BMI and gender, age or any of the other confounding variables. A moderate correlation was found between joint displacement detection threshold and age (r = 0.557 and r = 0.625 for the right knee and the left knee, respectively). The threshold was substantially and significantly different between the OA patients and the elderly controls.------