Predicting Outcome Following Standardized Exercise Therapy in Knee Osteoarthritis Patients

Pain sensitization has been associated with pain severity in people with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) and a neuropathic pain component has been identified in up to 30% of KOA patients. Mechanistic pain profiling aims to identify the underlying mechanisms in the peripheral and central nervous systems, which are associated to the clinical pain. In addition, the mechanisms underlying the pain relieving effect of standardized exercise therapy are largely unknown, but it is hypothesized that they are linked to the patient's ability to activate the descending pain inhibitory pathways (conditioned pain modulation, CPM) in the central nervous system. Mechanistic pain profiling including CPM have been used prognostic to identify responders to treatment, but these measures as a prognostic tool for standardized exercise therapy has not been investigated. The primary aim of this study is to investigate if mechanistic pain profiling alone or in combination with clinical pain measures before standardized exercise therapy can predict the patients' pain reduction following the exercise therapy program