The clinical profile of people with knee osteoarthritis and a self-reported prior knee injury: A cross-sectional study of 10,973 people

BACKGROUND: Little is known about how a prior knee injury affects the clinical profile of individuals with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) although this is potentially important to personalize care.

OBJECTIVES: To compare individual and clinical characteristics of individuals with KOA with and without a self-reported prior knee injury.

DESIGN: Secondary data analysis of baseline data from the Good Life with osteoArthritis in Denmark (GLA:D®) registry.

METHODS: Individuals with symptomatic KOA, self-reporting a prior knee injury requiring a doctor's assessment, were compared to individuals without prior knee injury on a range of individual and clinical characteristics using multivariable logistic regression.

RESULTS: The analysis included 10,973 individuals with KOA of which 54% self-reported a prior knee injury. The average age was 64 years and 73% were female. We found that being male (Odds Ratio (OR): 0.99), having longer symptom duration of knee pain (OR: 1.07), having more painful body sites (OR: 1.03), being able to do more chair rises (OR: 1.02) and being more physically active in a week (2-4 days; OR:1.33) (>4 days; OR: 1.24) were associated with self-reporting a prior knee injury whereas being older (OR: 0.99), having higher BMI (OR: 0.99) and higher quality of life (OR: 0.98) were not associated with reporting a prior knee injury.

CONCLUSION: The overall pattern of our findings rather than specific characteristics indicates that individuals with KOA and a history of a self-reported knee injury have a somewhat different clinical profile than their non-injured peers.