Simple Walking Change Cut Knee Arthritis Pain in Year-Long Trial — SkimNews
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- University of Utah researchers co-led the first randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial of personalized gait retraining for knee osteoarthritis, published in The Lancet Rheumatology in August 2025 with collaborators at Stanford and New York University.
- The trial randomized 68 participants into two groups of 34; the personalized-intervention group averaged a 2.5-point pain reduction on a 0–10 scale versus 1.3 points in the sham group, and 91% of intervention participants achieved a clinically meaningful reduction in pain versus 66% in the comparison group.
- Co-lead Scott Uhlrich, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Utah, said the pain decrease over placebo fell "somewhere between what you'd expect from an over-the-counter medication, like ibuprofen, and a narcotic, like OxyContin."
- MRI scans using a T1rho measurement indicated slower deterioration of a cartilage-health marker in the intervention group's inner knee; a second MRI measurement showed no significant difference between groups, and researchers cautioned the findings do not establish that damaged cartilage was rebuilt.
- Participants tested small inward or outward foot-angle adjustments of 5° or 10° on instrumented treadmills with motion capture to identify the individual-specific angle that most reduced knee loading — and some prospective participants were excluded because no tested angle lowered their joint load.
- Biofeedback training over six weekly treadmill sessions used a shin-mounted vibrating device that signaled when the foot drifted outside the prescribed angle; on follow-up, participants maintained their assigned angle to within roughly one degree during daily walking.
- The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs funded the trial; two participants in the intervention group and one in the sham group withdrew because of increased knee pain, though no severe adverse events were reported.
Why it matters: For the roughly 22% of adults over 40 living with osteoarthritis, this is the first placebo-controlled evidence that a drug-free biomechanical intervention can deliver pain relief comparable to common medications and potentially slow cartilage damage. The personalized approach also clarifies why earlier one-size-fits-all gait retraining studies produced inconsistent results — the right foot angle is individual-specific.
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