Growing pains can be bad omen

31 July 2014 - 02:03 By ©The Daily Telegraph
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
Image: The Times

Growing pains experienced by children can turn into osteoarthritis in later life if not properly treated, a new study has found.

A third of teenagers suffer pains in their knees and for half of them the pain does not go away. Fewer than a 10th experience daily twinges, the Danish study of 3000 adolescents found.

A quarter of the elderly who have knee replacements due to osteoarthritis said they had suffered pain in the knees as teenagers.

Physiotherapist Dr Michael Skovdal Rathleff of Aarhus University said "growing pains" could disappear with the right training in the case of up to 50% of young people.

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now