Development of new passive exercise equipment inducing contraction of functional muscles around knee joint without pain.

A new type of 'Passive Exercise Equipment' has been developed, which can induce muscular contraction of the functional muscles around knee joint. Not only user s who are not eager to exercise but also patients with both type 2 diabetes and knee joint osteoarthritis can perform exercise just by following our equipment's motion while sitting on it. In order to reduce knee joint pain, the equipment has three types of original functions. Our experiments, using the equipment, shows that (1) from a subjective evaluation by persons with knee joint osteoarthritis, knee joint pain was smaller than that of walking on a flat surface area, (2) glucose uptake was significantly enhanced from the Euglycemic Clamp study for both young healthy persons and elder persons with type 2 diabetes, and (3) 12 weeks training using the equipment has improved the rating of the knee joint osteoarthritis.