Review: both aerobic and home-based quadriceps strengthening exercises reduce pain and disability in knee osteoarthritis.

M e t h o d s Data sources: MEDLINE, EMBASE/ Excerpta Medica, CINAHL, PEDro, and the Cochrane Library (all searched to September 2003); and bibliographies of relevant studies. Study selection and assessment: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in English of patients with knee osteoarthritis that compared aerobic walking or homebased quadriceps strengthening exercise with a nonexercise control group. Quality assessment of individual studies included randomization, blinding, withdrawals, and dropouts using a 5-point scale. Outcomes: Pain and self-reported disability. The differences between the mean change scores for exercise and control groups were converted to effect sizes.