Exploration of lifestyle interventions for individuals with knee osteoarthritis: A scoping review.
Bashir Bello, Fatima Y Aliyu, Bashir Kaka and 1 others
A scoping review of 36 studies (4,025 participants) maps lifestyle interventions for knee OA.
Combined programmes (exercise plus education, diet, or psychological support) tend to outperform single-component approaches, but the studies are too varied in design and outcomes to give one clear recommendation.
Key findings
1Multicomponent lifestyle interventions that combined physical activity with education, psychological support, or nutritional counselling were reported as producing greater improvements in pain, function, and quality of life than single-modality approaches.
2No single outcome measure was used across all 36 studies. The WOMAC index was the most common tool for pain and function, but the wide variety of measures used limits the ability to compare studies or pool results.
3Telehealth and mobile-app delivery models were reported as offering clinical benefits comparable to in-person care, but digital literacy and tech usability were recurring barriers, particularly for older or less technologically proficient patients.
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What it does not show
Most included studies were conducted in high-income countries (Australia, US, UK, Sweden, Norway), so the findings may not generalise to low-resource settings where access to facilities, technology, and multidisciplinary teams is limited. The interventions, delivery formats, and outcome measures varied so widely across the 36 studies that direct comparison or pooling of results was not possible; the review maps the landscape rather than ranking interventions. Many of the included studies reported only short-term outcomes (weeks to a few months), so the durability of the reported benefits is unclear. Grey literature and non-English publications were excluded, introducing a potential publication bias toward positive findings from academic settings. As a scoping review, no formal quality assessment or effect-size estimation was performed; the 'effectiveness' reported reflects each individual study's own findings rather than a pooled estimate. No patients or members of the public were involved in the design, conduct, or reporting of the review.
Declared interests
The authors declared no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication of the article. No conflicts of interest were reported.
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