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The acute effect of walking in barefoot inspired footwear on T2 relaxation time of knee cartilage.
Project IdSGS01/PdF/2020-2021
Main solverMgr. Zuzana Golembiovská
Period1/2020 - 12/2021
ProviderSpecifický VŠ výzkum
Statefinished
AnotationAppropriate footwear is an important topic that is in interest to many scientific studies(Oeffinger et al., 1999; Shakoor et al., 2010; Keenan et al., 2011; Radzimski et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2013). Barefoot inspired footwear is relatively new trend in shoemaking, and it quickly found its fans and is now being promoted as a healthy variant of footwear despite the lack of evidence-based facts that would prove its positive impact on human health. The vast majority of scientific research of this topic describes the kinetic and kinematic parameters of walking in this footwear. The result of Sinclaira's research (2014) talks about protective effect of barefoot footwear on the incidence of knee injury, but on the other hand, about higher risk of Achilles tendon injury while running. At present it is still unclear whether wearing barefoot shoes is a risk or protective factor for degenerative cartilage changes in the knee joint. Content and integrity of collagen components (Kretzschmar, 2019) are considered as indicators of early cartilage degeneration, which can be analyzed by quantitative assessment of T2 relaxation time obtained by magnetic resonance measurement (Dardzinski, 1997; Liess, 2002; David-Vaudey, 2004). Increased T2 relaxation time has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of developing OA (Baum et al., 2012; Baum et al., 2013; Joseph GB et al., 2015). Osteoarthritis (OA) is an important health problem affecting the human musculoskeletal system in developed countries. The knee joint is one of the most commonly affected joints. Treatment of OA pharmacologically without biomechanical intervention is not often successful. Therefore it is necessary to focus on finding biomechanical risk factors of OA. There is currently a lack of studies linking biomechanical gait parameters in barefoot inspired footwear with morphological changes in the cartilage of the knee joint, from which could emerge evidence-based clinical recommendations.