Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation Improves Stair Climbing Capacity in People with Knee Osteoarthritis

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 7294
• Main Authors: Iijima, Hirotaka, Eguchi, Ryo, Shimoura, Kanako, Yamada, Keisuke, Aoyama, Tomoki, Takahashi, Masaki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 29.04.2020; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 692/700/565/411; 692/700/565/491; Aged; Arthritis; Climbing; Correlation analysis; Female; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Knee; Male; Middle Aged; multidisciplinary; Muscle Strength; Osteoarthritis; Osteoarthritis, Knee - physiopathology; Osteoarthritis, Knee - therapy; Pain; Quadriceps muscle; Quadriceps Muscle - physiopathology; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Secondary analysis; Stair Climbing; Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation; Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation-TENS
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-64176-0

This study aimed to examine the effect of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) on stair climbing capacity in individuals with pre-radiographic to mild knee osteoarthritis (OA). This is a secondary analysis of data from a single, participant-blinded, randomized controlled trial with a pre-post design. Participants with pre-radiographic to mild knee OA (mean age, 59.1 years; 72.9% women) were randomly assigned into two groups, a TENS (n = 30) and a sham-TENS groups (n = 29). TENS or sham-TENS treatments were applied to all participants by using the prototype TENS device with pre-specified parameters. The primary outcome measures included valid and reliable functional measures for stair climbing (stair-climb test [SCT]), visual analog scale for knee pain during the SCT, and quadriceps muscle strength. TENS improved SCT time by 0.41 s (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.07, 0.75). The time reduction in the transition phase explains the TENS therapeutic effect. Post-hoc correlation analyses revealed a non-significant but positive relationship between the pain relief effect and improved 11-step SCT time in the TENS group but not in the sham-TENS group. These results indicate that the TENS intervention may be an option for reducing the burden of early-stage knee OA.