The effects of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy on muscle strength and pain in patients with end-stage knee osteoarthritis: A randomized controlled trial
Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee is one of the most common chronic degenerative joint conditions affecting aging population.
Aim: To investigate the effectiveness of a combination of home-based exercise and pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) therapy to improve muscle strength, physical function, and pain.
Methods: Sixty patients were randomly assigned to either home-based exercise alone (control group; n = 30) or combined with PEMF therapy (treatment group; n = 30) twice a week for eight weeks. Knee extension, flexion muscle strength, gait speed (GS), 5 time sit-to-stand test (5STS), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) pain and Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) were recorded at baseline and 4 and 8 weeks.
Results: Significant improvements in symptomatic knee extension muscle strength (SKE, p = 0.001), flexion strength (SKF, p = 0.011), contralateral knee extension muscle strength (CKE, p = 0.002), and flexion strength (CKF, p = 0.009) were observed for the PEMF treatment group at 8 weeks. Significant reductions in VAS pain scores were observed in both the treatment (p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.505) and control (p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.268) groups. Significant differences were reported between groups in the 4 (p = 0.010, partial η2 = 0.111) and 8 (p = 0.046, partial η2 = 0.068) week assessment in VAS pain. A significant time difference was found in GS and 5STS between baseline and week 8 (GS: difference 0.051, p = 0.026; 5STS: difference 2.327, p < 0.001) in the treatment group. The significant group difference at week 8 was observed in SKE (p = 0.013) in female patients while pain in male patients (p = 0.026). Patients aged over 70 years have a significantly superior improvement in SKE, SKF, and CKF after 8 weeks of PEMF therapy.
Conclusion: The combination of PEMF therapy and home-based exercise superiorly improved knee muscle strength and reduced pain in end-stage knee OA subjects and showed a promising tendency to improve performance-based physical function. PEMF therapy was shown to preferentially benefit knee muscle strength in female patients and patients aged over 70 years, whereas male patients were more responsive to PEMF therapy in the form of pain relief.
Clinical trial registration: clinicalTrials.gov, NCT05550428.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
Frontiers in MedicineVolume
11Publisher
FrontiersVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© Wang, Ong, Man, Franco-Obregón, Choi, Lui, Fong, Qiu, He, Ng and Yung.Publisher statement
This is an Open-Access article published by Frontiers Media and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2024-10-03Publication date
2024-10-16Copyright date
2024eISSN
2296-858XPublisher version
Language
- en
