According to the Arthritis Foundation, 66 million Americans (or nearly 1 in 3 adults) currently suffer from arthritis, with osteoarthritis (OA) being the most common form, and the knee being the joint most commonly affected. Despite the need for early treatment, few clinical interventions slow the progression of knee OA. Since articular cartilage is responsive to the amount of joint loading, reducing compressive loads in the diseased compartment may slow the rate of cartilage breakdown. Because medial compartment load cannot be measured non-invasively in vivo, an external measure to quantify the desired load reduction has been sought. The best candidate found thus far is the external knee adduction moment during gait [1]. This moment exhibits two peaks during the gait cycle, one during early stance phase and the other during late stance. A high peak knee adduction moment has been correlated with increased disease severity [2] and an increased rate of disease progression [3].

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