title: Immediate effects of an elastic knee sleeve on frontal plane gait biomechanics in knee osteoarthritis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Osteoarthritis of the knee affects millions of people. Elastic knee sleeves aim at relieving symptoms. While symptomatic improvements have been demonstrated as a consequence of elastic knee sleeves, evidence for biomechanical alterations only exists for the sagittal plane. We therefore asked what effect an elastic knee sleeve would have on frontal plane gait biomechanics.
  
  
  METHODS
  18 subjects (8 women, 10 men) with osteoarthritis of the medial tibiofemoral joint walked over ground with and without an elastic knee sleeve. Kinematics and forces were recorded and joint moments were calculated using an inverse dynamics approach. Conditions with sleeve and without sleeve were compared with paired t-Tests.
  
  
  RESULTS
  With the sleeve, knee adduction angle at ground contact was reduced by 1.9 ± 2.1° (P = 0.006). Peak knee adduction was reduced by 1.5 ± 1.6° (P = 0.004). The first peak knee adduction moment and positive knee adduction impulse were decreased by 10.1% (0.74 ± 0.9 Nm • kg-1; P = 0.002) and 12.9% (0.28 ± 0.3 Nm • s • kg-1; P < 0.004), respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study provides evidence that wearing an elastic knee sleeve during walking can reduce knee adduction angles, moments and impulse in subjects with knee osteoarthritis. As a higher knee adduction moment has previously been identified as a risk factor for disease progression in patients with medial knee osteoarthritis, we speculate that wearing a knee sleeve may be beneficial for this specific subgroup.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sport Science, University of Freiburg, Schwarzwaldstrasse 175, D-79117 Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Raphael
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schween
authors.affiliation: Department of Sport Science, University of Freiburg, Schwarzwaldstrasse 175, D-79117 Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Dominic
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gehring
authors.affiliation: Department of Sport Science, University of Freiburg, Schwarzwaldstrasse 175, D-79117 Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gollhofer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D001915:Braces; D005260:Female; D005684:Gait; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020370:Osteoarthritis, Knee / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy*; D016138:Walking