"Shoulder Musculoskeletal Disorders in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Contributing Factors and Rehabilitation Protocol"

Goals: to compare the effects of two distinct rehabilitation protocols (conventional shoulder musculoskeletal rehabilitation combined with aerobic exercises versus solely conventional shoulder musculoskeletal rehabilitation) on shoulder pain, function, strength, kinematics and tendon thickness in patients with type 2 DM after 12 weeks of intervention and a subsequent follow up of 8 weeks. The secondary objective of this study will be to evaluate the association between AGEs accumulation and shoulder pain, function, strength, kinematics and tendon thickness in individuals with type 2 DM. Methodology: is a single-blinded randomized controlled trial, in which all subjects with a clinical diagnosis of type 2 DM (with at least 1 year of diagnosis), of both sexes, between 40 and 70 years, presenting shoulder pain (uni or bilateral) for at least 3 months with a pain intensity score from 3 points on a numerical rating scale for pain intensity, will be invited to participate. The main outcomes of this study will include the AGEs accumulation through skin autofluorescence measurement; shoulder pain through NRS scales; shoulder function through SPADI questionnaire and range of motion measurement; isometric shoulder muscles strength through manual muscle dynamometer measurement; shoulder kinematics through three dimensional inertial units measurements; supraspinatus tendon thickness through ultrasound measurement. All these outcomes will be measured before and after the rehabilitation protocols. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the two rehabilitation groups: specific shoulder rehabilitation protocol group (SRG); or 2) specific protocol of shoulder rehabilitation plus aerobic exercise group (ARG). All individuals will be evaluated before starting the rehabilitation protocol (baseline) and at the end of rehabilitation (post 12 weeks) and 8 weeks after the end of the rehabilitation (follow up). For the statistical analysis, to verify the effectiveness of protocols over time, a variance analysis (ANOVA) of mixed model with Bonferroni adjustment will be performed for pairwise comparisons. Variables that do not meet the ANOVA assumptions will be analyzed by the Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon tests with Bonferroni correction a priori. In order to assess the secondary objective of the study, correlation tests depending on data distribution will be performed (Pearson or Spearman correlation tests). A simple linear regression analysis will also be performed in order to analyze how much the AGEs accumulation can explain the alterations in the musculoskeletal and biomechanical variables. The significance level will be set at 5%.