Investigating the Effects of the UniReliever® Knee Brace Using Analysis of a Novel Digital Platform, MAI Motion

Background: Knee braces are widely used to reduce pain and aid mobility in people living with knee osteoarthritis (KOA). This study aimed to determine whether a widely used knee brace, the UniReliever knee (URK) brace (Thuasne SAS, Levallois-Perret, France), improved knee alignment in patients with KOA using a novel digital platform, MAI Motion (MSK Doctors, Sleaford, United Kingdom). Methods: The movement of eight patients was recorded using MAI Motion whilst performing three sets of repeated (5x) sit-to-stand (S2S) and squat movements whilst wearing: no brace (control), an inactive brace with no offloading (additional control), or an active brace with offloading (as used in the real world). The URK (TM5+ hinge2) brace, a dynamic offloading knee brace, was used, and images were captured using a standard red-green-blue (RGB) camera. Statistical significance was determined by one-way and two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) using GraphPad Prism (Dotmatics, Boston, Massachusetts, United States). Results: There was a high degree of variability in knee alignment between patients, accounting for over 80% of the variation observed (p<0.0001). The active URK brace significantly improved knee alignment in three patients performing the S2S activity and four patients performing the Squat activity (all p<0.05). Conclusions: The active URK brace significantly improved knee alignment in up to 50% of patients. The MAI Motion platform provided an objective method to detect subtle changes during movement, making it suitable for the investigation and monitoring of musculoskeletal conditions in remote, web-based settings.