According to a large study of activity levels and arthritis (关节炎) pain, there seems to be no link between the amount of exercise people do and whether they develop painful osteoarthritis in their knees. But the research couldn’t rule out that high-impact forms of exercise like running bring on the condition.
Osteoarthritis is more common as people get older and is sometimes called a “wear and tear” condition. Arthritic knees often have obvious damage to their cartilage which covers and protects the ends of bones.
Earlier studies have found conflicting (矛盾的) results on whether exercise can make arthritis more likely. So Lucy Gates at the University of Southampton in the UK and her colleagues joined together the results of six such studies, which over 5,000 people took part in who firstly had no knee pain or other sign of arthritis.
At the beginning, people were asked about how much exercise they did, including playing sports, walking and cycling. They recorded the general time spent exercising each week, and their activities were graded by their metabolic equivalent, or MET (代谢当量) scores, a standard way of dividing activities into different types according to how much they raise a person’s metabolic rate.
At the end of the studies, which lasted from five to twelve years, people were also asked if they had developed knee pain or arthritis. The probability of developing arthritis wasn’t associated with activity levels, either by how much time people spent exercising each week or by their total time and MET scores.
“There’s more work to be done on telling apart risk and different types of activity,” says Gates. “The next step is to figure out how different weight-bearing activities might change things. We can’t say there’s no relationship there,” says team member Thomas Perry at the University of Oxford.
8. What is the finding of the large study?
A.Too much exercise leads to arthritis. |
B.Arthritis is common among old people. |
C.Sports-loving persons are in better health. |
D.Exercise may not be responsible for osteoarthritis. |
9. What made Lucy Gates and her colleagues do the large study?
A.Their love for exercise. | B.The goal to treat knee pain. |
C.The results of earlier studies. | D.Their care for those 5,000 people. |
10. How did Lucy Gates and her colleagues do the large study?
A.By studying the cause of pain knees. |
B.By tracking and recording for a long time. |
C.By asking people to fill in online questionnaires. |
D.By grading and recording people’s metabolic rates. |
11. In which column of a newspaper may this text appear?
A.Education. | B.Jobs. | C.Sports. | D.Arts. |