Patellofemoral (PF) pain is a common ailment of the lower extremity. A theorized cause for pain is patellar maltracking due to vasti muscle activation imbalance, represented as large vastus lateralis:vastus medialis (VL:VM) activation ratios. However, evidence relating vasti muscle activation imbalance to patellar maltracking is limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation...

Knee extension is always performed with coordinated contractions of multiple quadriceps muscle components; however, how the load is shared among them under normal and pathological conditions is unclear. We hypothesized that: the absolute moment generated by each quadriceps component increases with the total knee extension moment; the relative contribution and its dependence on the total knee ex...

The aim of this study was to investigate the kinematic, kinetic, and electromyographic pattern before, during and after downward squatting when the trunk movement is restricted in the sagittal plane. Eight healthy subjects performed downward squatting at two different positions, semisquatting (40 degrees knee flexion) and half squatting (70 degrees knee flexion). Electromyographic responses of ...

To cite: Tsujimoto N, Saraya T, Shimoda M, et al. BMJ Case Rep Published online: [please include Day Month Year] doi:10.1136/ bcr-2014-204691 DESCRIPTION A 62-year-old previously healthy woman was referred to the orthopaedic department because of bilateral thigh pain accompanied by palpable subcutaneous nodules in both thighs. The extremity coronal MRI with fat-suppressed T2-weighted images sho...

This study aimed to describe the neuromuscular activity of elite athletes who performed various roller figure skating jumps, to determine whether the muscle activation is greater during jumps with more rotations and in which phase the muscles are more active. This study also aimed to analyze if there is any difference in the muscle activity pattern between female and male skaters. Four elite sk...

BACKGROUND Maximal isometric quadriceps strength deficits have been widely reported in studies of knee osteoarthritis (OA), however little is known about the effect of osteoarthritis knee pain on submaximal quadriceps neuromuscular function. The purpose of this study was to measure vastus medialis motor unit (MU) properties in participants with knee OA, during submaximal isometric contractions....