Self‐Acupressure for Older Adults With Symptomatic Knee Osteoarthritis: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: This double-blind randomized controlled trial aimed to test the efficacy of self-administered acupressure for pain and physical function improvement for older adults with knee osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS: Participants were community-dwelling adults with symptomatic knee OA (n = 150, mean age 73 years), randomized to 1 of 3 groups: verum acupressure, sham acupressure, or usual care. Participants in the verum and sham groups, but not those in the usual care group, were taught to self-apply acupressure once daily, 5 days/week for 8 weeks. Assessments were collected during center visits at baseline, and at 4 and 8 weeks. In addition, pain level was assessed weekly by phone using a numeric rating scale (NRS). Outcomes included the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) pain subscale (primary), and subjective and objective physical function measures and the NRS and physical function measures (secondary). Linear mixed regression analysis was conducted to test between-group differences in mean changes from baseline for the outcomes at 8 weeks. RESULTS: Compared with usual care, both verum and sham acupressure participants experienced significant improvements in WOMAC pain (mean difference -1.27 units [95% confidence interval (95% CI) -1.95, -0.58] and -1.24 units [95% CI -1.92, -0.55], respectively), NRS pain (-0.74 units [95% CI -1.24, -0.24] and -0.51 units [95% CI -1.01, -0.01], respectively), and WOMAC function (-4.83 units [95% CI -6.99, -2.67] and -4.21 units [95% CI -6.37, -2.04], respectively) at 8 weeks. There were no significant differences between the verum and sham acupressure groups on any of the outcomes. CONCLUSION: Self-administered acupressure is superior to usual care in pain and physical function improvement for older adults with knee OA. The reason for the benefits is unclear, and the placebo effect may play a role.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".