Latest Orthopaedic News & Breaking Orthopaedic News | Orthogate Professionals

Walking, running, sprinting - every movement of the foot stretches the Achilles' tendon. When jumping, the loads can approach ten times the body weight. Amazingly, the connection between the heel bone and Achilles' tendon withstands theses tremendous loads. A team of doctors, physicists, chemists and engineers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now discovered why.

Some 8000 torn Achilles' tendons are treated in Germany every year. And that even though it is the strongest tendon in the human body. It connects the ankle bone to the calf muscle and holds up to ten times the body's weight.

A type of drug used to treat weak bones is associated with an increased risk of 'micro-cracks' in bone, according to new research.

The early-stage research, by scientists at Imperial College London, suggests these microcracks may reduce mechanical strength of the bone.

In the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers studied bone samples from 16 people who had been diagnosed with the weak bone condition osteoporosis.

All of the patients had suffered a broken hip, and half of the patients had been taking a type of commonly-prescribed drug called bisphosphonate.

Conditions where the immune system attacks healthy cells might increase dementia risk.

Dementias are a range of conditions, the most prevalent of which is Alzheimer's. They are characterized by a progressive loss of memory function and other cognitive skills, eventually leading to an inability to perform everyday activities.

Currently, an estimated 47.5 million people are living with dementia, worldwide.

The anxiety experienced by elite athletes over illness symptoms is linked to the risk of being injured during competition and should be taken seriously, according to a study carried out at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics 2015. The way in which the symptoms progress and the nature of the sporting activity also influence the risk of injury.

"Elite athletes know their own bodies extremely well. If an athlete becomes anxious about injury or illness, this is a reliable indicator of the degree of seriousness. We have seen this also in previous studies. An athlete cannot lie to himself or herself," says Toomas Timpka of the Athletic Research Center, Department of Medicine and Health Sciences at Linköping University, one of the researchers who conducted the study.

A study led by the University of Granada (UGR) has shown that doping is not only a problem exclusive to professional sports, but also occurs in amateur sports.

In an article published in The Sport Psychologist journal, researchers warn that it is necessary to increase control over the doping problem also in popular cycling, conducting campaigns to raise awareness and prevent the consumption of performance-enhancement drugs (PEDs).

The team of scientists who carried out this work is made up of researchers from the universities of Granada and Elche, in addition to the Spanish Cycling Federation. To do this, they investigated the relationship between the use of performance-enhancement substances (measured by an anonymous questionnaire) and a number of psychosocial variables: attitude towards doping, self-esteem, self-efficacy and perception of doping substances among cyclists (false consensus effect).

In particular, Dr. Cunningham conducts ACL reconstruction, partial and total knee replacements and cartilage restoration surgery. He uses cadaver and autologous chongrocyte implants in patients who have lost their meniscus or articular cartilage. He serves as a U.S. Ski Team physician and is a member of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Arthroscopy Association of North America and Colorado Orthopaedic Society.

Dr. Cunningham graduated from Seattle-based University of Washington School of Medicine before completing a general surgery internship and orthopedic surgery residency at Salt Lake City-based University of Utah School of Medicine.

The benefits of physical activity may outweigh the impact of overweight and obesity on cardiovascular disease in middle-aged and elderly people, according to research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. The observational study was conducted in more than 5,000 people aged 55 years and older who were followed-up for 15 years.

"Overweight and obesity is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and it is recommended to lose weight," said author Dr Klodian Dhana, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

An in-depth computational analysis of genetic variants implicated in both schizophrenia and rheumatoid arthritis by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh points to eight genes that may explain why susceptibility to one of the disorders could place individuals at lower risk for the other, according to the results of a study published in the journal npj Schizophrenia.

"There is a wealth of genomic data on both schizophrenia and rheumatoid arthritis. Analyzing it jointly with known protein interaction information could provide invaluable clues to the relationship between the diseases and also shed light on their shared roots," said Madhavi Ganapathiraju Ph.D.