| Static knee alignment is associated with the risk of unicompartmental knee cartilage defects (2007) | |||||||||
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| Although knee malalignment is a risk factor for the progression of unicompartmental knee osteoarthritis (OA), it is unclear how this relationship is mediated. Cartilage defects are known to predate cartilage loss and the onset of knee OA, and it may be that knee malalignment increases the risk of unicompartmental knee cartilage defects. Knee radiographs andMRIwere performed on a total of 202 subjects, 36.6% of whom had radiographic knee OA, to determine the relationship between static knee alignment and knee cartilage defects. Analyses were performed for the entire cohort, as well as for healthy andOAsubgroups. For every 18 increase in a valgus direction, there was an associated reduced risk of the presence of cartilage defects in the medial compartment of subjects with kneeOA (p¼0.02), healthy subjects (p¼0.002), and the combined (p | |||||||||
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