Evaluation of Ground Reaction Forces in Patients with Various Severities of Knee Osteoarthritis

Abstract

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) changes the force applied on the lower extremities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between various severity of KOA and the forces applied to the lower limb during walking. Sixty eight limbs were divided into three groups of mild, moderate and severe KOA and a healthy normal group according to the Kellgren-Lawrence scale. The subjects walked with a self-selected speed to collect five successful trials. The components of ground reaction forces i.e., medio-lateral (ML), first peak of antero-posterior (AP1), second peak of antero-posterior (AP2), first peak of vertical (VP1), second peak of vertical (VP2) and vertical valley (V.V) were collected. AP1 and AP2 had decreasing pattern with increasing disease severity. Although ML Peak and VV have shown rising trend from normal people to severe KOA, ML difference was not significant in various groups (p > 0.05). In addition, the VP1 did not differ significantly among the subjects. In contrast, the VP2 decreased significantly in OA subjects (p = 0.002). It seems that AP1 and VP2 components are more sensitive to KOA, which may be used to represent severity of knee OA.