Joint Action

Exercise is no better than salt-water injections for knee osteoarthritis with Prof Marius Henriksen

Jan 30, 2022

42:13

Exercise and education are recommended treatments for knee osteoarthritis. To date, there have been over 100 clinical trials demonstrating the beneficial effects of exercise for knee osteoarthritis compared to no-treatment control groups. This has resulted in strong recommendations for exercise as a primary management strategy for knee OA. The comparison of exercise to a no-treatment control introduces multiple biases. One option to overcome this is to compare exercise to a placebo treatment such as salt-water injections. A recently published paper compared an 8-week exercise and education program to 4 placebo salt-water injections in 206 adults with knee osteoarthritis. On this episode of Joint Action, we are joined by Marius Henriksen to discuss the results of his study.

Professor Marius Henriksen is a research physiotherapist and besides leading the Physiotherapy and Biomechanics research unit at The Parker Institute, he is also a professor of physiotherapy at Copenhagen University and the department of physical and occupational therapy at Bispebjerg-Frederiksberg Hospital. His research focuses on clinical effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions (in particular physiotherapy) with focus on pain and disability across a wide range of diseases.

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