Gender and age-related differences in bilateral lower extremity mechanics during treadmill running

PLoS One. 2014 Aug 19;9(8):e105246. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105246. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Female runners have a two-fold risk of sustaining certain running-related injuries as compared to their male counterparts. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of the sex-related differences in running kinematics is necessary. However, previous studies have either used discrete time point variables and inferential statistics and/or relatively small subject numbers. Therefore, the first purpose of this study was to use a principal component analysis (PCA) method along with a support vector machine (SVM) classifier to examine the differences in running gait kinematics between female and male runners across a large sample of the running population as well as between two age-specific sub-groups. Bilateral 3-dimensional lower extremity gait kinematic data were collected during treadmill running. Data were analysed on the complete sample (n = 483: female 263, male 220), a younger subject group (n = 56), and an older subject group (n = 51). The PC scores were first sorted by the percentage of variance explained and we also employed a novel approach wherein PCs were sorted based on between-gender statistical effect sizes. An SVM was used to determine if the sex and age conditions were separable and classifiable based on the PCA. Forty PCs explained 84.74% of the variance in the data and an SVM classification accuracy of 86.34% was found between female and male runners. Classification accuracies between genders for younger subjects were higher than a subgroup of older runners. The observed interactions between age and gender suggest these factors must be considered together when trying to create homogenous sub-groups for research purposes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Age Factors
  • Aged
  • Biomechanical Phenomena
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Leg / physiology*
  • Male
  • Running*
  • Sex Characteristics
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by research grants from the Alberta Innovates: Health Solutions (funded by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research endowment fund), a charitable donation from SOLE, Inc., and the University of Calgary Eyes High Postdoctoral Research Award program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.