Evaluating the role of weight loss in symptomatic knee osteoarthritis: an audit of Osteoarthritis healthy weight for life’s database

Review written by Dr Anthony Teoli info

Key Points

  1. In patients with knee OA, there was a dose–response relationship between weight loss and improvement in knee symptoms, whereby greater weight loss resulted in greater improvements in knee pain and function.
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BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE

Obesity is an important, modifiable risk factor for the development and progression of knee osteoarthritis (OA) (1). As such, clinical guidelines recommend weight loss in patients with knee OA who are overweight or obese (2,3). However, there have been inconsistent findings regarding the amount of weight loss needed to achieve a meaningful difference in symptoms, and there has been little research on the effect of baseline body mass index (BMI) and baseline knee pain.

Therefore, the aim of this retrospective, observational study was to evaluate whether baseline BMI or knee pain influences the amount of weight loss required to produce meaningful change in patients with knee OA.

Obesity is an important, modifiable risk factor for the development and progression of knee osteoarthritis.
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This study demonstrated that patients may see a clinically relevant improvement in pain with as little as 2.5% weight loss.

METHODS

  • This study is a retrospective analysis of data from 9004 patients with knee OA who took part in the Osteoarthritis Healthy Weight For Life (OAHWFL) program.
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