Effects of traditional Chinese medicine massage therapy on pain, functional activity, muscle activation patterns and proprioception in knee osteoarthritis: a randomised controlled trial protocol
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Health education, weight control and exercise therapy are recognised treatment options for the non-surgical management of knee osteoarthritis (KOA); however, the pain and muscle fatigue associated with exercise make it difficult for patients to initially adhere. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) massage is an important complementary and alternative therapy that can effectively address these deficiencies. According to TCM theory and preliminary clinical practice, loosening of the muscles while pointing to acupoints can promote the recovery of KOA. Therefore, we hypothesised that exercise therapy in conjunction with TCM massage may lead to more satisfactory results in terms of pain management, active functional muscle activation patterns and proprioception in patients with KOA. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: A parallel, single-centre, randomised controlled trial involving 106 patients will be conducted at Shuguang Hospital, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Eligible patients with KOA who agree to participate will be randomised via a 1:1 randomisation system into the experimental group (receiving TCM massage and exercise treatment) and the control group (receiving exercise treatment). The primary endpoint is the change in the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) for pain from baseline to 24 weeks. Secondary outcomes include knee function (measured using the WOMAC stiffness and WOMAC functional subscale questionnaire and the timed 'Up and Go' test), muscle activation states (evaluated with electromyography techniques), knee proprioception and treatment satisfaction, adherence, safety evaluation and other relevant factors. Outcome assessors and data analysts will be blinded to the allocations, and the participants will not disclose their specific allocations. Outcome analyses will be conducted on both intention-to-treat and per-protocol populations. A preliminary analysis will test whether TCM massage, in addition to exercise, has statistically better outcomes. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study protocol has received approval from the Ethics Committee of Shuguang Hospital, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (2023-1357-124-01).All study participants will be required to give written informed consent. The findings of the study will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication and presented at scientific conferences. Additionally, the participants will receive copies of the results. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ChiCTR2300077308.
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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 | 0.019 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.015 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.053 | 0.007 |
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".