Research summary · Recovery and rehabilitation
Chronic ankle instability and position sense across functional tasks
Researchers compared 20 people with chronic ankle instability and 19 healthy controls while they discriminated ankle inversion angles during standing, walking, double-leg landing and stair descent. Task-specific apparatus allowed assessment under different movement and loading demands.
- Publication year
- 2026
- First published online
- Publication type
- Cross-sectional comparative study
- Journal
- Journal of Sport Rehabilitation
- Population / context
- Ankle rehabilitation · Multiple sports
What the publication reports
The instability group had lower overall proprioception scores, with a reported between-group difference of 0.047 (95% CI 0.031–0.063). Performance varied across tasks, but the group-by-task interaction was not significant. Separate trend analyses showed a downturn during the most demanding task in the instability group. This suggests a potentially useful assessment question, not a confirmed group-specific response pattern.
Limits and interpretation
The small cross-sectional sample cannot establish whether impaired position sense causes instability or predict future sprains. Separate within-group trends should not override the nonsignificant interaction. The study did not test a rehabilitation treatment.
Read the source
Consult the original record for the full author list, methods, references, funding and competing-interest disclosures.
Ankle Proprioceptive Performance on Increasingly Challenging Functional Tasks in Groups With and Without Chronic Ankle Instability.
Original publication / indexed recordPMID: 42926125DOI: 10.1123/jsr.2025-0436Reader discussion
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