ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to evaluate the changes in knee pain, a dominant cause of physical disability, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, and to identify factors affecting the changes in knee pain. METHODS: We analyzed the pre- and post-COVID-19 longitudinal dataset of the Nagahama Study. Knee pain was assessed using the Knee Society Score (KSS). The estimated KSS from the age and sex using regression model in the pre- and post-COVID-19 dataset was compared. Factors including the activity score, educational level, and various impacts of COVID-19 were analyzed for correlation analyses with changes in KSS. RESULTS: Data collected from 6409 participants showed statistically significant differences in KSS, pre- (mean = 22.0; SD = 4.4) and post-COVID-19 (mean = 19.5; SD = 6.4). Low activity score (p = 0.008), low educational level (p < 0.001) and undesirable financial impact (p = 0.030) were independently associated with knee pain exacerbation. CONCLUSION: The harmful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on knee pain were suggested. People should be encouraged to engage in physical activities, such as walking, even despite the state of emergency. Furthermore, social support for economically disadvantaged groups may improve healthcare access, preventing the acute exacerbations of knee pain.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Japan has been known as a super-aged society, and ageing is a well-known risk factor for blinding eye diseases. However, epidemiological studies in ophthalmology are still scarce in Japan, and the sizes of the cohorts are relatively small. "Ganka-Ekigaku Network" (GEN, an acronym for the epidemiological network in ophthalmology in Japanese) is established to develop a capacity to boost each epidemiological study and enrich a potential inter-study collaboration to identify risk factors of visual impairment in aged society. METHODS: We reviewed cohort studies in Japan with the inclusion criteria as: (1) at least n = 1000 at baseline, (2) multiple modalities of ophthalmic data, and (3) diagnosis reviewed by ophthalmologist(s), and (4) ophthalmologists are involved in the investigators group. As of January 2020, GEN includes 4 individual Japanese epidemiological studies namely, Hisayama study, Yamagata Study (Funagata), Tsuruoka Metabolomics Cohort study, and the Nagahama Prospective Genome Cohort for Comprehensive Human Bioscience. RESULTS: GEN includes approximately 25,000 Japanese participants. The baseline surveys started from 1998 to 2012, and since then the data has been prospectively collected approximately every 5 years. A variety of ophthalmic measurements and other factors have been collected in each study in GEN: ophthalmic measurements (fundus photography, optical coherence tomography, etc.), systemic conditions (laboratory data, etc.), and others (DNA, etc.). CONCLUSION: GEN is an open platform for observational ophthalmic epidemiological studies to share standardized methodologies. While each study in GEN pursues specific and original research questions, standardization of the methods will enable us to conduct reliable meta-analysis/pooled data analyses.