Effects of treadmill speed on the knee angle and stance time of white rats with knee osteoarthritis according to the treadmill speed.
Chan-Woo Nam, Jung-Ho Lee, Sang-Hun Jang
PMID 27942109WHAT IT FOUND
In rats with induced knee osteoarthritis, treadmill walking decreased knee angle at both speeds.
Stance time decreased at moderate speed and increased at high speed. This does not show a speed that helps people.
Key findings
01Moderate-speed treadmill exercise changed knee angle from 104.5 ± 0.6° to 92.5 ± 2.4° and stance time from 327.1 ± 64.6 ms to 288.6 ± 49.1 ms.
02High-speed treadmill exercise changed knee angle from 104.5 ± 0.5° to 96.7 ± 1.0° and stance time from 295.1 ± 33.7 ms to 377.4 ± 63.0 ms.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The study was done in white rats with injected knee osteoarthritis, not in people, so it does not show what treadmill speed helps human patients. The text and table give different treadmill speeds: 15 versus 16 m/min for the moderate-speed group and 26 versus 25 m/min for the high-speed group. No blinding, allocation concealment, or dropout handling is described. The outcomes were knee angle and stance time in rats; pain, function, and patient-important outcomes were not measured. An electrical stimulus was used when rats stopped walking, so the effect of treadmill speed alone cannot be separated from the stimulus.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the different stance-time changes as proof that one treadmill speed is better for human knee osteoarthritis. The study measured rats, and it did not test pain or function in people.