Women's shoes linked to pain, not men's

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BOSTON, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- The shoes many women choose to wear now may cause them pain when they are older, U.S. researchers said.

Lead author Alyssa B. Dufour, a graduate student at the Institute for Aging Research of Hebrew SeniorLife found that the types of shoes women wear -- specifically high-heels, pumps and sandals -- may cause future heel and ankle pain.

The study, published in the journal Arthritis Care & Research, found nearly 64 percent of women who reported hind-foot pain regularly wore these types of shoes at some point in their life.

The researchers analyzed foot-examination data of more than 3,300 men and women as part of the Framingham Study, a study begun in 1948 to study cardiovascular disease.

The researchers said past shoe wear among women is a key factor for hind-foot pain, but they found no significant link between foot pain and the types of shoes men wear.

Foot pain is a common complaint in the U.S. adult population -- foot and toe symptoms are among the top 20 reasons for physician visits among those 65 to 74 years of age, Dufour said.