Force-Sensing Treadmill to Detect Arthropathy
By Dr. David Clark
Force-Sensing Treadmill to Detect Arthropathy
3/20/24 A group of Japanese researchers is studying whether gait analysis (the way people walk) using a force-sensing treadmill can be used to detect hemophilic arthropathy (joint damage). They looked at a group of twelve people with hemophilia who have arthropathy, 28 with hemophilia but without arthropathy and twelve people without hemophilia. They found significant differences among the groups. For instance, looking at gait speed, they found an average speed of 3.1 km/h for the non-hemophilia group, 2.0 km/h for the hemophilia without arthropathy group and 1.5 km/h for the hemophilia with arthropathy group. The treadmill also records a number of other gait-related aspects such as the weight on each leg, where each foot strikes the treadmill, wobble both side-to-side and front-to-back, etc.
The most important finding is that people with hemophilia but without known arthropathy had gaits that differed significantly from those for people without hemophilia. Thus, the force-sensing treadmill might provide a way for early detection of joint problems, even before arthropathy can be detected by imaging studies such as MRI or ultrasound.
The researchers also compared results from the force-sensing treadmill with those from the Hemophilia Joint Health Score 2.1 (HJHS), a common tool for the diagnosis of joint issues in hemophilia. The HJHS was designed to identify the initial stages of joint dysfunction among people with hemophilia in childhood and adolescence and has been established as a dependable assessment tool. They found no correlation between the HJHS and the treadmill, except for gait speed. This is probably because the HJHS, as useful as it is, is not sensitive enough to detect the really early changes that can be seen with the treadmill. More work needs to be done on the treadmill before it becomes a useful, convenient tool for analyzing joint health, and the group is continuing their studies. [Mawarikado Y et al., Haemophilia, online ahead of print 3/20/24]