Melissa Boswell

Stanford University | SU · Department of Bioengineering

This randomized clinical trial evaluated the effectiveness of short, digital interventions in improving physical activity and pain for individuals with knee osteoarthritis. We compared a digital mindset intervention, focusing on adaptive mindsets (e.g., osteoarthritis is manageable), to a digital education intervention and a no-intervention group....

Physical function decline due to aging or disease can be assessed with quantitative motion analysis, but this currently requires expensive laboratory equipment. We introduce a self-guided quantitative motion analysis of the widely used five-repetition sit-to-stand test using a smartphone. Across 35 US states, 405 participants recorded a video perfo...

Health behaviors are inextricably linked to health and well-being, yet issues such as physical inactivity and insufficient sleep remain significant global public health problems. Mobile technology—and the unprecedented scope and quantity of data it generates—has a promising but largely untapped potential to promote health behaviors at the individua...

Physical function decline due to aging or disease can be assessed with quantitative motion analysis, but this currently requires expensive laboratory equipment. We introduce a self-guided quantitative motion analysis of the widely used five-repetition sit-to-stand test using a smartphone. Across 35 US states, 405 participants recorded a video perfo...

Modifying the foot progression angle during walking can reduce the knee adduction moment, a surrogate measure of medial knee loading. However, not all individuals reduce their knee adduction moment with the same modification. This study evaluates whether a personalized approach to prescribing foot progression angle modifications increases the propo...

Background: Despite the benefits of physical activity for individuals with knee osteoarthritis (KOA), physical activity levels are low in this population. Objectives: We conducted a repeated cross-sectional study to compare mindset about physical activity among individuals with and without KOA and to investigate whether mindset relates to physic...

Background: Eccentric exercise is widely used to increase muscle fascicle lengths and thus decrease the risk of muscle strain injuries. It is commonly assumed that increased sarcomere number drives this training adaptation and reduces risk of muscle strain, however this has yet to be experimentally tested. This study used a new microendoscopy techn...

Background Eccentric exercise increases muscle fascicle lengths; however, the mechanisms behind this adaptation are still unknown. This study aimed to determine whether biceps femoris long head (BFlh)¹ fascicle length increases in response to 3 weeks of eccentric exercise training are the result of an in-series addition of sarcomeres within the mus...

MINDSETS PREDICT PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES IN INDIVIDUALS WITH KNEE OSTEOARTHRITIS Osteoarthritis Research Society International Congress 2021

Objectives. We compared mindsets about physical activity among those with and without knee osteoarthritis and investigated if these mindsets relate to physical activity level and symptom management. Methods. Participants with (n=150) and without (n=152) knee osteoarthritis completed an online survey at study enrollment (T1). Participants with knee...

Purpose Eccentric exercise is widely used to increase muscle fascicle lengths and thus decrease the risk of muscle strain injuries. However, the mechanisms behind this protection are still unknown. The aim of this study was to determine whether Biceps femoris long head (BFlh) fascicle length increases in response to three weeks of eccentric exercis...

Objective The knee adduction moment (KAM) can inform treatment of medial knee osteoarthritis; however, measuring the KAM requires an expensive gait analysis laboratory. We evaluated the feasibility of predicting the peak KAM during natural and modified walking patterns using the positions of anatomical landmarks that could be identified from video...

Objectives The goal of this study was to evaluate the importance of personalization when selecting foot progression angle modifications that aim to reduce the peak knee adduction moment in individuals with medial knee osteoarthritis. Design One hundred seven individuals with medial knee osteoarthritis walked on an instrumented treadmill with biofe...