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Tibial acceleration variability during consecutive gait cycles is influenced by the menstrual cycle
Journal of Foot and Ankle Research volume 4, Article number: O3 (2011)
Background
The relationship between the phases of the menstrual cycle and injury risk remains unclear. Neuromuscular function may be compromised during menstruation, which could result in reduced cyclicality of movement patterns. We hypothesize that mediolateral (varus/valgus) knee acceleration during running gait will possess increased variability during menstruation when compared to ≈ovulation in women who do not take the monophasic oral contraceptive pill (MOCP).
Methods
Thirty-six women (18 MOCP users: MOCP group and 18 non-pill users: NP group) performed six minute treadmill running trials at 10 km h−1 with an accelerometer fixed to the proximal tibia. Trials were performed at menstruation and ≈ovulation (for the MOCP group at a similar stage of the cycle) in a randomized order. The cyclicality of gross mediolateral tibial acceleration during 15 consecutive strides was assessed using combined wavelet and autocorrelation analysis. Longitudinal and anteroposterior accelerations were also examined. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests were performed to assess differences at each stage of the menstrual cycle (α=0.05).
Results
Gross mediolateral acceleration in the NP group had significantly (P=0.022) increased variability at the time of menstruation compared to ≈ovulation, and was also significantly (P=0.011) more variable than the MOCP group at the corresponding time point. No significant difference was observed for any measure in the MOCP group.
Conclusions
Increased variability in the NP users at menstruation may be a result of compromised motor control strategies. This provides further evidence of variability in performance and motor control during menstruation, and may have implications for a female athlete's risk of injury, particularly at the level of the knee.
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Bartold, S., Bryant, A. & Clark, R. Tibial acceleration variability during consecutive gait cycles is influenced by the menstrual cycle. J Foot Ankle Res 4 (Suppl 1), O3 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/1757-1146-4-S1-O3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1757-1146-4-S1-O3
Keywords
- Menstrual Cycle
- Motor Control
- Proximal Tibia
- Gait Cycle
- Female Athlete