Personalized Gait Retraining Beneficial for Medial Compartment Knee OA

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 13, 2025 (HealthDay News) — For individuals with medial compartment knee osteoarthritis, a personalized foot angle modification may improve pain, reduce knee loading, and slow progression of osteoarthritis, according to a study published online Aug. 12 in The Lancet Rheumatology.

Scott D. Uhlrich, Ph.D., from the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Healthcare System in California, and colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial involving individuals with symptomatic medial compartment knee osteoarthritis. Sixty-eight eligible participants were randomly assigned to an intervention or sham group (34 each). All participants received real-time biofeedback instructing them to walk consistently with a personalized target foot progression angle during six walking retraining visits to a university gait library. The target was the 5- or 10-degree change in foot progression angle that maximally reduced knee loading for the intervention group and the natural progression angle for the sham group.

The researchers found that participants in the intervention group had significantly greater reductions in medial knee pain and knee adduction moment peak than those in the sham group at one year. In the intervention group versus the sham group, the magnetic resonance imaging-estimated change in cartilage microstructure (T_1p relaxation time) in the medial compartment was less at one year. No severe adverse events were reported; two and one participants in the intervention group and sham group, respectively, dropped out due to increased knee pain.

“These results highlight the importance of personalizing treatment instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach to osteoarthritis,” co-lead author Valentina Mazzoli, Ph.D., also from Veterans Affairs Palo Alto, said in a statement.

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