Pain threshold correlates with functional scores in osteoarthritis patients

Figures & data

Flow diagram of recruitment of osteoarthritis (OA) patients and control subjects for quantitative sensory testing (QST).

Table 1. Clinical data on patients with knee and hip osteoarthritis (OA). Values are median (range)

Variable	Knee OA n = 50	Hip OA n = 49
Sex (F/M)	27/23	29/20
Age, years	66 (44–77)	64 (40–77)
Visual analog scale	2 (0–10)	2 (0–10)
Duration of pain, years	7 (0–30) ^a	3 (0–20) ^a
FFbH-OA, points	56 (6–86)	56 (17–97)
AKSS 1, points	41 (0–75)	-
AKSS 2, points	50 (5–100)	-
Oxford knee score, points	35 (19–53)	-
Harris hip score, points		56 (15–82)

^a p = 0.02.

FFbH-OA: functional questionnaire of Hannover for OA;

AKSS 1, 2: American Knee Society score 1, 2.

Table 2. Quantitative sensory testing parameters on the affected and the healthy side in knee and hip osteoarthritis (OA) patients and controls (n = 15). Values are median (range)

Variable ^a	OA patients	p-value ^b	Healthy controls	p-value ^c
Knee OA (n = 50)
PPT ak	4.0 (0–10)	< 0.001	7.8 (4–10)	0.003
PPT hk	6.3 (2–10)			0.2
CDT ak	28 (23–31)	0.02	27 (13–30)	0.08
CDT hk	27 (20–31)			0.8
WDT align="left">ak	38 (33–47)	0.005	37 (34–48)	0.4
WDT hk	40 (34–49)			0.03
CPT ak	2.6 (0–25)	0.007	1.8 (0–10)	0.2
CPT hk	0 (0–22)			0.5
HPT ak	47 (38–50)	0.04	47 (42–50)	0.7
HPT hk	49 (41–50)			0.1
Hip OA (n = 49)
PPT ah	4.5 (2–10)	0.06	6.8 (4–10)	0.03
PPT hh	4.7 (0–10)			0.1
CDT ah	28 (19–31)	0.7	28 (26–31)	0.9
CDT hh	29 (9–31)			0.8
WDT ah	36 (34–47)	0.8	37 (35–44)	0.3
WDT hh	36 (33–49)			0.4
CPT ah	0 (0–30)	0.7	0.2 (0–12)	0.5
CPT hh	0 (0–30)			0.5
HPT ah	47 (37–50)	0.006	47 (42–50)	0.8
HPT hh	48 (40–50)			0.3

^a PPT: pressure pain threshold; CDT: cold detection threshold;

WDT: warm detection threshold; CPT: cold pain threshold;

HPT: heat pain threshold.

ak: affected knee, hk: healthy knee, ah: affected hip, hh: healthy hip

^b Affected side vs. healthy side.

^c Controls vs. patients.