Does childhood activity help or hurt the development of the knee joint?
There are many people doing studies in this field who believe that physical activity in children definitely affects the cartilage and joint development of the knee. They conclude “the current evidence supports a prescription of vigorous physical activity for optimum knee joint development in children.” The early years are important windows of opportunity to increase bone mass and researchers also believe this could be true of joint development. MRI studies have shown children with no vigorous activity had 25% less hyaline articular cartilage than even mildly active children. Of course, children gain articular cartilage during growth. However, children undertaking more vigorous sports had significantly higher rates of articular cartilage accrual than their inactive counterparts. The unknown factor, of course, is the long term significance of the results with regard to arthritis of the knee in later life.
