A new study comes to the somewhat counterintuitive conclusion that marathon runners have less arthritis than non-runners.
• The study:
Many people would assume that serious runners face a high risk for arthritis of the hip and knees. Yet prior research has generally failed to uncover such a connection. The most recent study, published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, actually found that veteran American marathoners had only half as much arthritis as non-runners. According to alarming new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, arthritis now represents a $300 billion annual burden.
• Method and results:
Researchers from the orthopedic department at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University compared arthritis rates between 430 U.S. marathoners and a matched sample of non-runners in the National Center for Health Statistics database.
The marathoners (average age 46, and 51 percent women) had been running for an average of 19 years, logging 35 miles a week, and finishing 48 marathons. Despite this, they had an arthritis prevalence of 8.8 percent vs. 17.9 percent for non-runners. Aging past 65 did increase the marathoners’ arthritis rate — to 24.5 percent. But this was still roughly half the 49.6 percent of non-runners older than 65.
