Home exercises can effectively ease knee pain caused by cartilage tears and arthritis, apparently with or without physical therapy, a new study says.

The stretching and strengthening exercises provided about the same amount of pain relief whether or not a person got real or sham physical therapy, researchers reported Oct. 29 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“On average, participants in all groups reported moderately severe pain at the start of the study and much milder pain three, six and 12 months later,” lead researcher Dr. Jeffrey Katz said in a news release. He’s clinical director of the Orthopedic and Arthritis Center for Outcomes Research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

As many as 40% of middle-aged folks and 80% of those with knee arthritis have tears in their knee cartilage, which is called the meniscus, researchers said in background notes.

For the study, nearly 900 people with an average age of 59 were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The patients all had knee pain, arthritis and a meniscus tear.

One group took part in a 25-minute home exercise program four times a week, guided by a video and pamphlets. The second and third groups got home exercise plus either real or placebo physical therapy.

Those who got real or sham PT did have slightly greater pain improvement at six and 12 months, but those benefits likely were illusions, researchers said.

“We observed similar improvement in the standard PT and sham PT groups, suggesting that personal interactions with a physical therapist may have been more influential than the physical therapy itself,” Katz said.

Previous studies have found that 60% to 80% of the total effect of physical therapy for knee arthritis comes from interactions with therapists rather than the therapy itself, researchers noted.

Patients who received motivational text messages related to their home exercise program also did not appear to have any better pain outcomes.

“The percentage of participants who adhered to home exercises during the first 3 months was virtually identical across all groups,” researchers wrote. “Motivational text messages were not associated with differences in adherence to home exercises or in pain outcomes.”