Immediate effects of acupuncture on gait patterns in patients with knee osteoarthritis

Background Acupuncture has been shown to be effective in pain relief and anesthesia, and has been suggested for treating various kinds of functional disabilities in traditional Chinese medicine, including knee osteoarthritis （CA）. The study aimed to investigate the immediate effects of acupuncture on gait patterns in patients with knee CA. Methods Twenty patients with bilateral medial knee CA were assigned evenly and randomly to a sham group and an experimental group. During the experiment, the experimental group underwent a 30-minute formula electro-acupuncture treatment while the sham group received a sham treatment. Before and after treatment, each subject was evaluated for their knee pain using visual analog scales （VAS） and then their performance of level walking using gait analysis. For all the obtained variables, the independent t-test was used for between-group comparisons, while paired t-test was used to investigate the before and after changes. Results All the measured data before acupuncture treatment between the groups were not significantly different. The VAS scores were decreased significantly after acupuncture in both groups, and the mean change of the VAS values of the experiment group was 2 times greater than that of the sham group. After formula acupuncture stimulation, while no significant changes were found in all the gait variables in the sham group, the experimental group had significant increases in the gait speed, step length, as well as in several components of the joint angles and moments. Conclusions The results of the study suggest that significantly improved gait performance in the experimental group may be associated with pain relief after treatment, but the relatively small decrease of pain in the sham group was not enough to induce significant improvements in gait patterns. Gait analysis combined with the VAS can be useful for the evaluation of the effect of acupuncture treatment for patients with neuromusculoskeletal diseases and movement disorder.