Influence of running on femoroacetabular joint bone‐to‐bone distances

Abstract

AbstractThere is limited data quantifying the influence of running on hip cartilage mechanics. The goal of this investigation was to quantify changes in hip joint bone‐to‐bone distance in response to a 3‐mile treadmill run. We acquired magnetic resonance (MR) images of the dominant hip of eight young, asymptomatic runners (five males, three females) before and immediately after they ran 3 miles at a self‐selected pace on a level treadmill. The femoral heads and acetabula were semiautomatically segmented from the pre‐ and post‐exercise MR images to generate three‐dimensional models of each participant's hip that were used to compute changes in the bone‐to‐bone distances incurred by the running exercise. We observed a significant 3% decrease in bone‐to‐bone distance from 3.47 ± 0.20 to 3.36 ± 0.22 mm between the femoral head and acetabulum after a 3‐mile treadmill run (mean ± 95% confidence interval; p = 0.03). These findings provide new baseline data describing how running impacts the hip joint in young, asymptomatic runners.