Meta-Analysis of Knee Injury Prevention Training in Athletes

A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis by Hao Zhou synthesizes evidence from 10 studies involving 15,296 participants. It evaluates the effectiveness of exercise-based preventive training programs in reducing knee and ACL injury incidence among athletes. The analysis reports risk ratios and confidence intervals for injury outcomes.

Use Cases

• Analyze the pooled risk ratio (RR = 0.68) and confidence interval (95% CI: 0.51–0.92) for overall knee injury incidence from preventive training.
• Compare the reported risk ratio for anterior cruciate ligament injuries (RR = 0.43) against other injury types mentioned in the included studies.
• Examine the subgroup analysis results for factors influencing training program effectiveness, noting the caution due to small sample size.
• Investigate the high heterogeneity reported in the results and its potential sources across the 10 included studies.

Strengths

• Aggregates data from 15,296 participants across 10 studies, providing a substantial evidence base.
• Reports specific quantitative findings, including risk ratios and 95% confidence intervals for knee and ACL injuries.
• Includes a PROSPERO systematic review registration number (CRD42024543884) for transparency and protocol adherence.

Limitations

• High overall heterogeneity in the meta-analysis results, with sources that could not be identified.
• Subgroup analyses have limited reliability due to the small sample size of included studies (n=10).
• The dataset is a single 539.1 KB PDF file, limiting direct computational analysis without manual extraction.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Hao Zhou.

Collection Method

Systematic literature search across PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library, followed by meta-analysis.

Time Range

Publication date is 2026; specific temporal coverage of included studies is not detailed.

Freshness

Last updated March 23, 2026.