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The Responses of Continuous Knee Passive Stiffness Following Fatigue

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate continuous knee passive stiffness and its fatigue responses. Knee osteoarthritis is a clinically degenerative disease that mostly cause sustained stiff knee, hence, there is an urgent need to evaluate continuous knee passive stiffness, which corresponded to the stiffness of various angles during actual continuous knee rotation. However, how to measure this kind of stiffness is yet to reach an agreement.

Methods

This is a study incorporating 36 individuals, in which the fatigue protocol consisted of three bouts of multiple quadriceps voluntary isometric contractions of their dominant legs. Angle and passive torque were measured before and after each fatigue intervention cycle. Continuous knee passive stiffness of various angles and rate of stiffness under fatigue were both calculated.

Results

We derived the continuous knee passive stiffness data appeared as an asymmetric U-shaped curve. The passive stiffness (Nm/°) of the initial angle (0°) is 0.249 (0.159–0.285), while that of the other endpoint angle (91°) is 0.156 (0.130–0.354). The responses of continuous knee passive stiffness following fatigue interventions revealed a significant decrease in the knee angle from 10 to 36° (p = 0.02–0.05).

Conclusion

This renew study experimentally develop a novel approach to expand upon the existing methods of knee passive stiffness measurements. The intrinsic continuous knee passive stiffness and its fatigue responses both vary at specific knee angles. Our findings may provide stiffness assessment for knee osteoarthritis patients, complete fatigue intervention program, and optimize the artificial prosthesis design.

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Data Availability

Data can be available if authors agree.

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Funding

This study was supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC. 12272033, U20A20390); Space Medical Experiment Project of China Manned Space Program (HYZHXM01003); Beijing Science and technology Foundation (Z211100004121005); Young Elite Scientist Sponsorship Program by CAST (YESS 2015QNRC001); National Key Lab of Virtual Reality Technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Biomechanics and Mechanobiology (Beihang University), Ministry of Education, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, 37 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China

    Xiangfei Kong, Zizhan Lian, Yichen Yan, Jie Yao & Yubo Fan

  2. School of Medical Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China

    Yubo Fan

Authors
  1. Xiangfei Kong
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  2. Zizhan Lian
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  3. Yichen Yan
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  4. Jie Yao
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Contributions

XK: conceptualization, methodology, validation, software, investigation, formal analysis, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization; ZL: conceptualization, methodology, validation, writing—review and editing; YY: software, investigation; JY: validation, formal analysis, supervision, writing—review and editing, project administration, funding acquisition; YF: validation, project administration, funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jie Yao or Yubo Fan.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

The studies involving human participants were approved by Beihang University Ethics Committee (BM20220082). The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Consent to Participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors affirm that human research participants provided informed consent for publication.

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Kong, X., Lian, Z., Yan, Y. et al. The Responses of Continuous Knee Passive Stiffness Following Fatigue. J. Med. Biol. Eng. 43, 596–602 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40846-023-00809-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40846-023-00809-9

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