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An eightfold upsurge in knee replacements in recent decades has coincided with a growing obesity problem and an aging U.S. population. To evaluate whether age, obesity, and knee osteoarthritis (OA; defined radiologically with weight-bearing radiographs) are associated with temporal trends in knee pain and symptomatic OA (symptoms plus positive radiologic findings), researchers studied data from several thousand participants (age, ≥60) in National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES; 1971–2004) and the Framingham Osteoarthritis Study (1983–2005).
After adjustments for age and body-mass index, the prevalence of knee pain in NHANES among non-Hispanic white or self-described Mexican American women increased from 13% in 1974 to 26% i…