Exercise and weight management to improve physical function of obese adults with knee osteoarthritis : a systemic review

Abstract

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the major public health problems in the 21st century. Exercise and diet are recommended as the better therapies compared with traditional therapies. This systematic review aimed to find out the effectiveness of exercise and dietary interventions. HKU library, Cochrane library and China National Knowledge Internet were searched using Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) and inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. Six RCTs on three interventions (exercise, dietary and exercise plus dietary) were retrieved. The results of the review showed that the dietary interventions, the exercise interventions and the exercise plus dietary interventions were all effective on reducing patients’ pain score by comparing with control groups within each RCT, and the exercise plus dietary intervention were more effective than the others. Limitations of this systematic review included small number of trials and short duration of follow up. As meta-analysis of RCTs is usually considered to yield the highest level of evidence, followed by individual RCTs, the evidence from this review on RTCs can be considered as moderate to strong. More simplified and combined interventions with longer follow up were recommended and their effectiveness should be tested by RCT.