When knee pain is not osteoarthritis

摘要

Jenkinson and colleagues show that a simple dietary and exercise intervention has positive effects on knee pain.1 Over half of their unselected group, however, did not have radiological evidence of osteoarthritis. This shows that practitioners should always consider intra-articular and periarticular soft tissue problems and referred pain from other musculoskeletal regions. This large group might have a range of potentially self limiting soft tissue disorders skewing the observed improvements. This could be determined by interim analysis of WOMAC pain scores and functioning in those with low Kellgren-Lawrence scores at six or 12 months, thus identifying the characteristics of a better prognostic group.