The relationship between prospectively assessed body weight and physical activity and prevalence of radiological knee osteoarthritis in postmenopausal women

Abstract

Objective. To determine the effect of weight and physical activity on the prevalence of radiological knee osteoarthritis (OA) in a cohort of middle-aged women. Methods. The longitudinal phase of the Melbourne Women's Mid-life Health Project is a population-based prospective study of 438 Australian-born women who have been followed annually over 11 years. Of these women, 257 (59%) remained in longitudinal assessment at eleventh year of followup, and 224 of these women agreed to undergo radiographs of their knees. Radiographs were scored for features of OA [osteophytes and joint space narrowing (JSN)] using a validated scale, by 2 investigators who were blinded to questionnaire results. Data w..