Participants
knee fracture, knee pain, trauma
DISEASES, DEGENERATION, AUTOIMMUNE
This multicenter randomized controlled trial was conducted from January 2021 to June 2022 in two trauma centers (Shanghai Jiao Tong University affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital and The People’s Hospital of Mengla County). A total of 120 eligible outpatients were recruited for this two-arm single-assessor blinded randomized control trial.Inclusion criteria included:a) Age ≥ 50 years.b) Chief complaint of persistent or recurrent knee pain in the past few months.c) A history of knee pain ≥ 3 months.d) X-ray showing bony joint degeneration of the tibial joint.e) Meet the diagnostic criteria of MASLD.f) Ability and willingness to communicate daily using WeChat (Tencent Tech, Shenzhen, China).Exclusion criteria included:a) Record or plan of knee surgery/intra-articular injection within the past or next 6 months.b) Steroid use within the previous 4 weeks.c) Autoimmune arthritis.d) History of knee fracture or lower-limb deformity.e) History of knee/hip replacement or osteotomy.f) Diseases associated with other imaged lower limb functions.g) Inability to walk normally.h) Inability to communicate normally or poor medical compliance.MASLD was confirmed based on the diagnostic criteria (All patients provided written informed consent in compliance with the declaration of Helsinki before joining the study. All study protocols were approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Shanghai Jiao Tong University affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital (REC reference no.: 2016-110). This clinical trial was registered at chichr.org.cn (ID: ChiCTR2100042872).