Representatives of Arab nationalities have a knee joint structure slightly different from that of a European or American knee, which leads to more injuries to the knees and the early onset of diseases, experts from two leading centers for sports medicine in the United Arab Emirates concluded.
According to one of the UAE's leading orthopedists, Dr. Charles Brown, director of the Abu Dhabi Knee and Sports Medicine Center, the lower part of the Arabian tibia has a slightly greater slope than that of a European or American. Statistics of sports knee injuries in the center show that an amateur football player from the Emirates is five times more likely to receive a knee injury requiring surgical intervention than his peer from the United States. It was also found that Arabs often receive injuries of the anterior cruciate ligament of the knee in domestic conditions, and not during sports, which is completely not typical for Western countries. Each of the 600 emirates receives similar injuries, while in the United States one case occurs for every 3,000 people. An American by birth, Dr. Brown was quite surprised to receive in the UAE a large number of patients aged 30 to 40 years who have osteoarthritis (arthritis with damage to the articular ends of the articulating bones). The phenomenon revealed by Dr. Brown is also confirmed by his colleagues from the Dubai Bone & Joint Center, who unanimously claim that the knees of the Arabs are different than those of Europeans and Americans.
