News
Dr. Kumar co-authored a chapter in the rheumatology textbook
The 12 edition of Firestein & Kelley's Textbook of Rheumatology was just published. Dr. Kumar again co-authored the chapter on "Treatment of Osteoarthritis"
Dr. Kumar was at IIT Bombay!
Dr. Kumar taught lectures on measurement in biomechanics, inter-relations between chronic pain and biomechanics, and use of AI/ML in biomechanics at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in India.
New conference paper at SIGGRAPH ASIA
New open-access publication on using a biomechanics- and topology-informed neural network for personalized design of knee braces. This was presented at SIGGRAPH ASIA by PhD student Xingjian Han.
Read more here.
Welcoming Rhodora to our group!
Rhodora Therese Torres, PT, MS joined our group as a PhD student. Rhodora is a physical therapist trained in the Philippines with a Master's from Korea University.
Kayaking in the Charles!
We had a fun lab outing!
Introducing Dr. Soyoung Lee!
Dr. Soyoung Lee successfully defended her doctoral dissertation and will continue on as a postdoc at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Congratulations Dr. Lee!!
We received a new 3-year NIH R21 grant!
We received a new 3-year NIH grant to continue our work on mindful exercise for people with knee osteoarthritis!
Dr. Kumar discussed our work on gait and pain in a podcast
Dr. Kumar and Dr. Bacon discussed our recent publication on the relation of gait measures with worsening pain and physical function with Dr. David Hunter on his Joint Action podcast. Listed to the episode here and read the paper here.
New open-access publication in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Open
New publication in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Open on feasibility of a novel telehealth mindful exercise intervention for chronic pain due to knee osteoarthritis using a fully decentralized randomized controlled trial design.
A supervised, telehealth, group-based mindful exercise intervention, developed by integrating mindfulness into strengthening exercises, is safe and satisfactory for knee OA. Our decentralized approach yielded excellent recruitment and retention but suboptimal adherence and racial diversity. The findings from this study will guide refinements to the mindful exercise intervention and study design to facilitate greater adherence and racial diversity.
First author: Nirali Shah, PT, PhD
Read open access here.
New publication in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage
New publication from our group in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Journal on "Associations of Pain Sensitivity and Conditioned Pain Modulation with Physical Activity: Findings from the Multicenter Osteoarthritis Study (MOST)"
Soyoung Lee is the first author.
Using data from the Multicenter Osteoarthritis Study (MOST)(n=1,873), we observed that greater peripheral and/or central pain sensitivity was related to lower wearable accelerometer-derived daily step counts. However, conditioned pain modulation was not related to physical activity measures.
While this cross-sectional study does not inform causality or directionality, strategies to mitigate pain sensitization may be a necessary early step to increase physical activity in people with chronic pain due to knee osteoarthritis. Or increasing physical activity may partially improve pain via its action on pain sensitization.
Read more here.