Acute effects of wearing compression knee-length socks on ankle joint position sense in community-dwelling older adults

Functional proprioceptive information is required to allow an individual to interact with the environment effectively for everyday activities such as locomotion and object manipulation. Specifically, research suggests that application of compression garments could improve proprioceptive regulation of action by enhancing sensorimotor system noise in individuals of different ages and capacities. However, limited research has been conducted with samples of elderly people thus far. This study aimed to examine acute effects of wearing knee-length socks (KLS) of various compression levels on ankle joint position sense in community-dwelling, older adults. A total of 26 participants (12 male and 14 female), aged between 65 and 84 years, were randomly recruited from local senior activity centres in Singapore. A repeated-measures design was used to determine effects on joint position awareness of three different treatments–wearing clinical compression socks (20–30 mmHg); wearing non-clinical compression socks (< 20 mmHg); wearing normal socks, and one control condition (barefoot). Participants were required to use the dominant foot to indicate 8 levels of steepness (2.5°, 5°, 7.5°, 10°, 12.5°, 15°, 17.5°, and 20°), while standing on a modified slope box, in a plantar flexion position. Findings showed that wearing clinical compression KLS significantly reduced the mean absolute errors compared to the barefoot condition. However, there were no significant differences observed between other KLS and barefoot conditions. Among the KLS of various compression levels, results suggested that only wearing clinical compression KLS (20–30 mmHg) improved the precision of estimation of ankle joint plantar flexion movement, by reducing absolute performance errors in elderly people. It is concluded that wearing clinical compression KLS could potentially provide an affordable strategy to ameliorate negative effects of ageing on the proprioception system to enhance balance and postural control in community-dwelling individuals.