Influence of running on femoroacetabular joint bone-to-bone distances

There is limited data quantifying the influence of running on hip cartilage mechanics. The goal of this investigation was to quantify changes in hip joint bone-to-bone distance in response to a 3-mile treadmill run. We acquired magnetic resonance (MR) images of the dominant hip of eight young, asymptomatic runners (five males, three females) before and immediately after they ran 3 miles at a self-selected pace on a level treadmill. The femoral heads and acetabula were semiautomatically segmented from the pre- and post-exercise MR images to generate three-dimensional models of each participant's hip that were used to compute changes in the bone-to-bone distances incurred by the running exercise. We observed a significant 3% decrease in bone-to-bone distance from 3.47 ± 0.20 to 3.36 ± 0.22 mm between the femoral head and acetabulum after a 3-mile treadmill run (mean ± 95% confidence interval; p = 0.03). These findings provide new baseline data describing how running impacts the hip joint in young, asymptomatic runners.