What happens to the cartilage of ultra long distance runners during a race? It appears, according to a study conducted during the 2009 Trans Europe Foot Race and presented at the November 30, 2015 Radiology (RSNA) conference in Chicago, that cartilage regenerates itself during the race.
Using a mobile MRI truck a team of researchers accompanied 44 ultra-athletes on a 4, 500 kilometer race known as the Trans Europe Foot Race (TEFR) which took place from April 19 to June 21, 2009.
The ultra-endurance race started in southern Italy and ended in the North Cape in Norway. Forty-four of the runners (66%) agreed to participate in the study which lasted for nearly10 weeks. After following and measuring the runners over the 64 day race, the research team was astonished to find that cartilage in the knees of these athletes had partly regenerated despite the severe stresses (or because of them?) of running literally thousands of kilometers in a single race.
According to Uwe Schütz, M.D. radiologist and specialist in orthopedics and trauma surgery, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology University Hospital of Ulm, Germany, and lead investigator, it appears that the joint cartilage is initially altered by this running burden and shows signals of cartilage matrix degradation after the first 1, 000 to 1, 500 km of running.
But then something changes. When further running occurs the cartilage shows the ability to partially regenerate itself despite the stress on the joints of running.
Schütz wrote that, “This is a new and astonishing finding, first time measured and observed in human joints in vivo.” But knowledge of Scandinavian animal studies has shown the same behavior in dog cartilage, he said.
Schütz said that, as a result of this study, there seems to be no distance limit for running in the healthy cartilage. “If you have healthy joints in the legs, ” he said, “no obesity, leg deformities or other injuries in the lower extremities, you just have to begin the running sport step by step, give yourself enough time to rise to the distance, and there might be no limit regarding the risk of developing joint degeneration.”
Co-authors on the study are Christian Billich, M.D., Jutta Ellermann, M.D., Ph.D., Martin Ehrhardt, M.D., Daniel Schoss, M.D., Martin Brix, M.D., Siegfried Trattnig, M.D., Ph.D., Sabine Goed, M.D., Antje Reiner, M.D., and Meinrad J. Beer, M.D., Ph.D.
