Combined diet and exercise improves knee osteoarthritis

People with knee osteoarthritis who are overweight and obese could benefit more from combined intensive exercise and diet rather than one or the other, says research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A US team looked at 399 people with knee osteoarthritis who were overweight and obese and aged over 54 years. Volunteers were split into three groups: diet and exercise; diet only or exercise only.

The diet comprised weekly meal plan (up to two meal-replacement shakes a day and a meal between 500–750 kcal); exercise was one hour a day, three days a week.

The implications

Eighteen months later, the scientists found that people lost more weight in the diet group and the combined group, compared with the exercise group.

The combined group showed greatest reduced knee pain, better function, faster walking speed and better physical health-related quality of life than the exercise group.

And people in the combined group had lower Interleukin 6 levels (a measure of inflammation) compared with volunteers in the exercise group.

Next steps

The findings suggest that exercise and diet combined could help tackle the quality of life of people with knee osteoarthritis and the financial burden placed on the NHS.

“The findings from the IDEA trial data suggest that intensive weight loss may have both anti-inflammatory and biomechanical benefits; when combining weight loss with exercise, patients can safely achieve a mean long-term weight loss of more than 10%, with an associated improvement in symptoms greater than with either intervention alone,” say the researchers.