Is Cupping Therapy in Combination with Routine Physical Therapy Effective in the Management of Knee Osteoarthritis? A Randomized Controlled Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Osteoarthritis is a common form of arthritis accompanied by varying degrees of disability and reduced quality of life. Several management regimens are available to treat knee osteoarthritis. Cupping therapy is used to treat musculoskeletal disorders but its effects on knee osteoarthritis has remained unclear. The study aimed to compare the effectiveness of intermittent cupping therapy plus routine physical therapy with routine physical therapy alone in patients with knee osteoarthritis. Methods: Twenty-six patients with knee osteoarthritis were randomly assigned into two groups: intermittent cupping therapy plus routine physical therapy (intervention group, n=13) and routine physical therapy alone (control group, n=13). In the routine physical therapy group, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, hot pack, and ultrasound were used, while in the cupping therapy group, intermittent vacuum therapy was used together with routine physical therapy. Both groups received 10 treatment sessions over a period of 2 weeks. Pain intensity was measured via visual analog scale (VAS). Further, functional disability was assessed using the Persian version of Western Ontario and McMaster Universities (WOMAC) osteoarthritis index questionnaire. Finally, knee joint passive range of motion (ROM) was measured with photography preand post-intervention. Results: At follow-up, both groups had significantly lower pain intensity and functional disability, and higher knee passive ROM compared to their respective pre-intervention values (P<0.05). However, no significant differences were observed between groups in pain intensity or passive ROM in the knee (P>0.05). Differences in total WOMAC scores between pre- and post-intervention were significantly greater in the control group than in the intervention group (P<0.05). Conclusion: Based on the results, both interventions can be effective in relieving symptoms in patients with knee OA.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 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".