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 MAY 12, 2005 Overweight People More Likely to Tear Knee Cartilage If you want to protect your knees from injury, the answer may be as simple as lose some weight. In the first major study of its kind, University of Utah School of Medicine researchers have found the likelihood of tearing the meniscus, the cartilage that bears much of the load on the knee joint, increases dramatically with body mass index (BMI). BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. People with a BMI greater than 25 are considered overweight, and those with a BMI of more than 30 are considered obese. Overweight people are at least 3 times more likely to tear their meniscus, while the most obese men and women are 15 and 25 times, respectively, more likely to tear the cartilage, the researchers report in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. All the extra weight Americans are lugging around accounts for up to 450,000 out of 850,000 operations for meniscus tears annually, the researchers conclude. Lead investigator Kurt T. Hegmann, MD, MPH, research associate professor of family and preventive medicine, and his colleagues studied 515 patients who underwent meniscal surgery between 1996-2000 at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City and Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, Utah. These patients were compared to a control group of 9,944 other Utahns enrolled in the National Cancer Institute's Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial during the same years. The researchers calculated the likelihood of meniscal surgery and found that men with a BMI of 27.5 and higher and women with a BMI of 25 or higher were 3 times more likely to tear their meniscus. Men whose BMI exceeded 40 were 15 times more likely to tear their meniscus and women in that BMI category were 25 times more likely to tear the meniscus. |
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