Could creatine supplementation combined with physical rehabilitation accelerate return to play in athletes with patellar tendinopathy?
Study Details
This triple-blind randomised trial examined whether 3 g/day creatine enhanced an 8-week rehabilitation programme in 20 athletes with patellar tendinopathy 🔍
All athletes completed daily eccentric decline squats and stretching, plus manual therapy and shockwave therapy ~ every 10 days 🏋️
Key Findings
💥 VISA-P scores improved significantly over 8 weeks in both creatine and placebo groups, indicating reduced pain and better function
⏱️ The creatine group showed a significant improvement by week 4, whereas the placebo group did not improve significantly until week 8
⚠️ However, the overall time × supplementation interaction for VISA-P was not significant, so evidence that creatine accelerated pain reduction is suggestive rather than definitive
📉 Patellar tendon thickness progressively decreased across the 8-week intervention in both groups
↔️ Creatine did not provide an additional significant effect on tendon thickness
💪 Injured-leg 5-RM knee-extension strength improved substantially by weeks 4 and 8 in both groups
↔️ Strength improvements were similar with creatine and placebo
⤴️ Countermovement jump height increased in the creatine group from ~34.3 cm at baseline to 36.8 cm at week 4 and 37.6 cm at week 8
➖ No significant improvements in CMJ were detected in the placebo group
📊 However, the time × supplementation interaction for CMJ only approached significance (p = 0.099), so a specific creatine effect cannot be confirmed
⚖️ Creatine produced no clear additional changes in body mass, muscle mass or overall body composition
Conclusion
The authors propose that greater phosphocreatine availability and potentially reduced exercise-induced muscle damage could help athletes tolerate rehabilitation training, but these mechanisms were not directly measured 🧐
Adding 3 g/day creatine to a structured patellar tendinopathy rehabilitation programme may help support jump performance and possibly earlier symptom improvement, but rehabilitation itself produced most of the clear improvements ✅
Reference
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42730713/
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