March 21, 2017 – Knee Arthritis

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Anchor lead: Can an internet-based intervention help manage knee pain? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Therapy for knee pain due to osteoarthritis was effectively delivered using a web-based approach, a recent study found. Mike Klag, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, describes the results.

Klag: The intervention group reported significantly less pain, so their pain improved more, both groups their pain improved but it improved much more in the intervention group and they also had better physical functioning than the control group. They looked at three months, and there was improvement, and those differences were sustained at nine months. :16

Klag says since knee pain is universal, such a strategy has worldwide utility.

Klag: That’s the promise of this. As we age as a society for us in the US but especially in countries like Japan and China, how do we deal with these chronic conditions of aging? And so this is a way where you can do it very efficiently, and very cheaply and so it holds great promise. It’s a model for what we do as we deal with people with multiple conditions. :19

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.