The Study Of Influence Factor Of Ankle Cartilage Thickness

Objective:The objective of this study was to evaluate how age, height, weight,BMI and gender affect the ankle cartilage thickness of normal humanankle.And analyze why it is different from knee cartilage.Materials and methods:From January2011to December2014, there are145patients tookankle MRI in our hospital. The individuals who do not have lesion on theankle cartilage is taken as normal individuals, and there is99individualsmeet the condition. MRI is used to measure relative normal ankle jointcartilage thickness. According to the relationship of height and cartilagethickness, weight and thickness, age and thickness, BMI and thickness,scatter diagrams are made. Then the multivariate linear regressions weretaken. Then t-test between overweight patients and normal weightpatients is taken to find out the relationship between BMI and anklecartilage thickness further. In order to verify the influence of gender onthe thickness of the ankle joint cartilage, we choose the height between160cm and170cm. According to the gender is divided into two groupsand take t test of height and cartilage thickness of the two groups.Results:There is only “Height” has linear correlation with cartilage thickness(P<0.01). Weight, age, and BMI have no linear correlation with cartilagethickness (P>0.05). Ankle cartilage thickness has no statisticallydifference (P>0.05) between normal-weight group (18.5<BMI<24) andoverweight group (BMI≥24). The patients whose height is between 160cm and170cm are chosen. According to the gender is divided intotwo groups, height and thickness of ankle cartilage both had statisticallysignificant difference (P<0.01). So trying to eliminate the influence of theheight, we only set the highest height limit of male and the shortest heightlimit of female. We chose170cm as the highest height limit of male. Atfirst we choose160cm as shortest limit of female, but there is statisticaldifference (P<0.05) between male group of height. So we choose161cmand162cm as shortest limit of female. When162cm is shortest limit offemale, there is no statistical difference (P>0.05) between male group ofheight. So we choose male who was is not higher than170cm and femalewho is no shorter than162cm, and height and thickness of cartilage bothhad no statistically significant difference Ankle cartilage thickness has nostatistically difference (P>0.05) between different genders.Conclusions:Ankle joint cartilage thickness is mainly related to the height, but hasnothing to do with weight, BMI, gender and the growth of the age. Thisshows that the ankle joint cartilage thickness mainly depends on naturaldevelopment. Cartilage thickness will not reduce along with the agegrowth. Because biomechanical properties and physical and chemicalproperties was different between ankle joint cartilage and knee jointcartilage. So ankle osteoarthritis risk will not increase with age. Anklejoint cartilage thickness was no significant difference to different gender.So, men and women have the same ankle osteoarthritis risk.