Task-Specific Perturbation Training Improves the Recovery Stepping Responses by Women With Knee Osteoarthritis Following Laboratory-Induced Trips.

Trip-specific training improves the kinematics of trip-specific compensatory stepping response (CSR) in the laboratory and reduces prospectively measured trip-related fall-rate of middle age and older women. We examined whether one session of trip-specific perturbation training could improve recovery step kinematics in women with knee osteoarthritis (OA), a condition known to increase fall risk. Seventeen women with self-reported symptomatic knee OA (age 61.1 ± 7.7 years, body mass index [BMI] 29.7 ± 5.9 kg/m ) and 22 control women (age 59.5 ± 6.8 years, BMI 28.4 ± 6.2 kg/m ) completed a brief training protocol consisting of 20 trials of treadmill-delivered trip-specific perturbations. We assessed pre- and post-training recovery step length and trunk kinematics at the instant of recovery step completion. Repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to determine the significance of between-group differences following the training protocol, and to evaluate the significance of within-group pre-to-post changes in the variables of interest. The group by training interaction effects for step length (p = 0.466), trunk flexion angle (p = 0.751), and trunk angular velocity (p = 0.413) were not significant and the pre-to-post changes in step length were not significant (p = 0.286). However, pre-to-post trunk flexion angle improved by 26% and 34% in the OA and control groups, respectively (p < 0.001) and trunk flexion angular velocity decreased by 193% in the OA group and by 32% in the control group, respectively (p < 0.001), often reflecting a transition to the direction of extension. The results suggest that trip-specific training can improve CSR kinematics in women with knee OA. It is important to determine, the effectiveness of trip-specific training in decreasing trip-specific fall-rate by women with knee OA. © 2019 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 38:663-669, 2020.