Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein

People have hypothesized it must be the size of the ACL or the size of the knot, which is the space for the ACL, or neuromuscular control, or women have more valgus knees.

For our listeners, what is a valgus knee?

Being like a little bit more knock-kneed, yeah, and to simplify.

You know, you'll get one researcher that shows this, then someone else can't reproduce it.

And, oh, we find the ACL is smaller because the knee is smaller.

It's proportionate to size.

You know, so we...

There are a lot of theories that have been explored but never really truly figured out.

And then people have also looked at, you know, timing, cyclical timing of injuries.

There are some researchers... Meaning menstrual cycle.

Yeah.

Some researchers have shown like, well, there's more likelihood of knee injury like in the luteal phase.

Is it a lower estrogen state, perhaps with more muscular fatigue or like worse collagen synthesis, something like that?

Or is it in a higher estrogen state where perhaps there's more laxity?

of the ligament.

That is something that we are actively studying, and we have the most amazing study to look at all of these issues that I am so excited about.

But?

No, we have done pilot.

We've done some early data collection, and it's an NIH-funded study, and we are proceeding with.

So this study... And women especially.