The associations between body and knee height measurements and knee joint structure in an asymptomatic cohort

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Research Article

Patricia Berry¹  Andrew J Teichtahl¹  Yuanyuan Wang¹  Miranda Davies-Tuck¹  Anita E Wluka²  Flavia M Cicuttini³  Boyd J Strauss⁴ 

[1] Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Alfred Hospital, 3004, Melbourne, Vic, Australia;Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Alfred Hospital, 3004, Melbourne, Vic, Australia;Baker Heart Research Institute, Commercial Road, 3004, Melbourne, Vic, Australia;Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Alfred Hospital, 3004, Melbourne, Vic, Australia;Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Alfred Hospital, 3004, Melbourne, VIC, Australia;Department of Medicine, and Nutrition & Dietetics, Southern Clinical School, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia;Body Composition Laboratory, Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism Unit, Monash Medical Centre, Clayton, VIC, Australia;

关键词: Knee height;    Knee;    Cartilage;    Osteoarthritis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2474-13-19

 received in 2011-04-18, accepted in 2012-02-15,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIt has been suggested that knee height is a determinant of knee joint load. Nonetheless, no study has directly examined the relationship between anthropometric measures of height and knee joint structures, such as cartilage.Methods89 asymptomatic community-based adults aged 25-62 with no diagnosed history of knee arthropathy were recruited. Anthropometric data (knee height and body height) were obtained by standard protocol, while tibial cartilage volume and defects, as well as bone area were determined from magnetic resonance imaging. Static knee alignment was measured from the joint radiograph.ResultsAll anthropometric height measures were associated with increasing compartmental tibial bone area (p ≤ 0.05). Although knee height was associated with tibial cartilage volume (e.g. β = 27 mm3 95% CI 7- 48; p = 0.009 for the medial compartment), these relationship no longer remained significant when knee height as a percentage of body height was analysed. Knee height as a percentage of body height was associated with a reduced risk of medial tibial cartilage defects (odds ratio 0.6; 95% confidence interval 0.4 - 1.0; p = 0.05).ConclusionThe association between increased anthropometric height measures and increased tibial bone area may reflect inherently larger bony structures. However the beneficial associations demonstrated with cartilage morphology suggest that an increased knee height may confer a beneficial biomechanical environment to the chondrocyte of asymptomatic adults.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Teichtahl et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.