Active UniReliever® brace may significantly improve knee alignment in Knee Oasteoarthritis: Study

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a chronic, progressive degenerative joint disease associated with joint pain and stiffness, physical disability, and overall functional impairment. It represents one of the most common causes of chronic pain in older adults. It is characterised by the deterioration of articular cartilage, changes in subchondral bone, and alterations in the synovial membrane. Knee braces are widely used to reduce pain and aid mobility in people living with knee osteoarthritis (KOA). Tanvi Verma et al conducted a study to determine whether a widely used knee brace, the UniReliever knee (URK) brace improved knee alignment in patients with KOA using a novel digital platform, MAI Motion.

The movement of eight patients was recorded using MAI Motion whilst performing three sets of repeated (5x) sit-to-stand (S2S) and squat movements whilst wearing: no brace (control), an inactive brace with no offloading (additional control), or an active brace with offloading (as used in the real world). The URK (TM5+ hinge2) brace, a dynamic offloading knee brace, was used, and images were captured using a standard red-green-blue (RGB) camera. Statistical significance was determined by one-way and two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) using GraphPad Prism (Dotmatics, Boston, Massachusetts, United States).

The key findings of the study were:

• There was a high degree of variability in knee alignment between patients, accounting for over 80% of the variation observed (p<0.0001).

• The active URK brace significantly improved knee alignment in three patients performing the S2S activity and four patients performing the Squat activity (all p<0.05).

The authors concluded that – “The active URK brace significantly improved knee alignment in up to 50% of patients. The MAI Motion platform provided an objective method to detect subtle changes during movement, making it suitable for the investigation and monitoring of musculoskeletal conditions in remote, web-based settings.” 

For further details on the article refer to:

Investigating the Effects of the UniReliever® Knee Brace Using Analysis of a Novel Digital Platform, MAI Motion

Tanvi Verma et al

Cureus 18(4): e106571.

DOI 10.7759/cureus.106571