Background The effectiveness of wearing a brace to prevent sports injuries of the knee remains controversial. We examined the impact of functional newly developed garments.

Objective To investigate the biomechanics of the knee joint when wearing the functional garment with lines in the fabric of different elasticities.

Design Quasi-experimental.

Setting Controlled laboratory setting.

Participants 22 healthy male and female college students who participated in recreational sports.

Interventions A single-leg drop jump onto the force plate was performed from a height of 30 cm. Infrared-reflective markers were attached to a total of 39 points for each subject. Body movements were tracked using a high-speed (200 Hz) three-dimensional motion analyzer and a force plate (ground reaction force of 1000 Hz). Long garments were used: two types of garments with fabric lines of hard and soft elasticity and the same garment with no processing (NT) as a control.

Main outcome measurements External knee and knee valgus-varus moments as well as joint angle of the support leg were calculated using computer software.

Results At 40 ms after ground contact, a significant decrease in the knee valgus angle was observed when wearing the Hard garment (5.33±3.32°) compared to the NT garment (1.33±4.91°; P<.05). A significantly low knee valgus-varus moment was observed when wearing the Hard garment (–6.08±7.07 Nm/kg) compared with the NT garment (0.93±8.60 Nm/kg) (P<.05).

Conclusion The developed functional garment is considered to have reduced the knee abduction moment by controlling the knee valgus moment in a single-leg drop jump.The garment has the potential to avoid malalignment of the lower extremity and prevent sports injury of the knee joint.