Abstract
Musculoskeletal pain impairs postural control and stability. Nine subjects stood as
quietly as possible on a moveable force platform before, during, and after experimental
pain in the right leg muscles. A moveable force platform was used to measure the center
of pressure and provided unexpected perturbations. Lower limb muscle activity, joint
angles, and foot pressure distributions were measured. Hypertonic saline was used
to induce pain in the vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, or biceps femoris muscle
of the right leg. Compared to baseline and control sessions, pain in the knee extensor
muscles during quiet standing evoked: 1) larger sway area, greater medial-lateral
center of pressure displacement and higher speed (P < .05); 2) increased sway displacement in the anterior-posterior direction (P < .05); and 3) increased electromyography (EMG) activity for left tibialis anterior
and left erector spinae muscles (P < .05). Pain provoked longer time to return to an equilibrium posture after forward
EMG activity for, and pain in vastus medialis muscle decreased the time for the maximum
hip flexion during this perturbation (P < .05). These results show that muscle pain impairs postural stability during quiet
standing and after unexpected perturbation, which suggest that people suffering from
leg muscle pain are more vulnerable to falls.
Perspective
This article presents the acute responses to leg muscle pain on the postural control.
This measure could potentially help clinicians who seek to assess how pain responses
may contribute to patient’s postural control and stability during quiet standing and
after recovering from unexpected perturbations.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 17, 2011
Accepted:
February 16,
2011
Received in revised form:
February 3,
2011
Received:
September 28,
2010
Footnotes
Supported by The Danish Ministry of Health and Prevention.
There are no conflicts of interest from any author in the present study.
Identification
Copyright
© 2011 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
