What can cause knee pain without injury?

Posted on February 22 2019

Knee pain, in many cases, will have an apparent reason like a twist, a fall, a strain, or a misstep. This may happen anytime when we stand, walk or run. But in many cases, above the age of 50, knee pain arises without any evidence of injury, and we cannot predict the source of this pain.

Most commonly seen knee pain in aged people is due to knee arthritis. This would make our day to day activities harder, reduce our movement, and lead to severe disability in people.

There are several causes of being affected by  knee pain, without an injury:

  • Bursitis: The painful condition with redness around the joint, tenderness in the knee, and sometimes a fever due to infection or irritation and inflammation of the tiny sacs of fluid that covers the bones in the knee joint.
  • Tendinitis: Most common condition that causes pain in the knee is tendinitis. It will cause a dull ache in the knee with swelling, which increases with the use of the knee over time.
  • Baker’s cyst: The fluid-filled swelling seen at the back of the knee, which restricts the movement of the knee, is generally known as a popliteal cyst, otherwise called as Baker's cyst, is also one of the primary causes of the knee pain. Sometimes, we may have to drain out the fluid from the cyst for reducing the pain and for movement of the knee.
  • Osteoarthritis: Among the different types of knee arthritis, osteoarthritis is the most common in the people above 50 years. This causes knee pain without any injury or fracture. This type of knee arthritis is a degenerative one and is mainly due to the wear and tear of the cartilage in the knee joints. In this condition, the cartilage becomes tattered and rough reducing the protective space between the bones in the joint. This makes the bones rubbing against one another, resulting in chronic pain in the bones. The pain in this type of arthritis develops very gradually, but it aggravates severely over time. The main reason for this is the deterioration of the knee and sometimes might also be due to abnormal posture or obesity.
  • Rheumatoid arthritis: Except for the location of this, not contending with a single joint but varies from joint to joint, this is similar to osteoarthritis, with symptoms of stiffness, swelling, and pain, and is an autoimmune disease.