The Relationship Between Obesity and the Incidence of Genu Osteoarthritis in Women of Productive Age: Patients at the Medical Rehabilitation Clinic, University of Muhammadiyah Malang General Hospital

The prevalence of obesity among Indonesian women is very high and continues to rise sharply. This study investigates the relationship between obesity and the incidence of knee osteoarthritis (OA) in 24 female workers who were patients at the Medical Rehabilitation Clinic of UMM General Hospital, during July–August 2025. A cross-sectional design using purposive sampling and medical record data included age, body mass index, knee OA diagnosis, occupation, and metabolic comorbidities (hypertension/ diabetes). Results showed that the prevalence of obesity in knee OA patients is 66.7%. Fifty percent of knee OA patients are obese and still of productive age. Only 29.2% of patients have metabolic comorbidities. Fisher’s Exact test confirmed a significant association between obesity and knee OA (p=0.032), with a large effect size (Phi/V=0.478) and Goodman–Kruskal’s tau 0.229 (p=0.022), indicating that obesity status reduced the prediction error of knee OA by 22.9%. Job activities with ergonomic risks in this study vary, including high physical demand, high static and repetitive loads, and sedentary work. There is a relation between obesity and knee OA, with metabolic conditions and job categories as other variables.