Osteoarthritis (OA) affects several hundred million people and is one of the leading causes of disability around the world. Aging is the most influential risk factor for developing OA. Cartilage has a limited ability to spontaneously heal; therefore, it needs surgical intervention in case of cartilage defects caused by traumatic injury or degenerative disease. Due to the shortage of autologous ...

Articular cartilage lesions in the athletic population are observed with increasing frequency and, due to limited intrinsic healing capacity, can lead to progressive pain and functional limitation over time. If left untreated, isolated cartilage lesions can lead to progressive chondropenia or global cartilage loss over time. A chondropenia curve is described to help predict the outcome of carti...

Articular cartilage has a unique structure that makes it very different from any other tissues in the body. It has such specific roles and functions such as weight bearing with low frictional coefficient that the main bulk of its structure is based on that alone, thus making it a vascular, and thereby greatly limiting its self regeneration capabilities. This article aims to review the structure...

Introduction Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most prevalent joint disorder resulting in cartilage destruction, subchondral sclerosis, osteophyte formation, and synovitis. Knee osteoarthritis presents a great clinical challenge to clinicians due to the limited inherent repair capacity of avascular, aneural articular cartilage. Articular cartilage defects are increasingly common among the elderly caus...

Cell-based therapies offer great promise for repairing cartilage. Previous strategies often involved using a single cell population such as stem cells or chondrocytes. A mixed cell population may offer an alternative strategy for cartilage regeneration while overcoming donor scarcity. We have recently reported that adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) can catalyze neocartilage formation by neonat...

The extracellular matrix (ECM), present between cells, is the authentic substrate for most cells in living organisms. Interplay between the ECM and cells plays a critical role in regulating cell differentiation, proliferation, apoptosis, and matrix synthesis. A substantial characteristic of hyaline cartilage is that a few chondrocytes, which are the sole cells in this tissue, are surrounded by ...

Articular cartilage, together with skin, was predicted to be one of the first tissues to be successfully engineered. However cartilage repair remains nowadays still elusive, as we are still not able to overcome the hurdles of creating biomaterials corresponding to the native properties of the tissue, and which operate in joints environment that is not favorable for regeneration. In this review,...

OBJECTIVES Cartilage reshaping by laser irradiation is used to correct septal and auricular cartilage deformities. Chondrocyte viability following laser irradiation and reshaping has been well established. However, the regeneration process of chondrocyte after laser irradiation has not been revealed yet. The aims of this study were to determine the mechanism of cartilaginous thermal injury and ...

©2006 British Editorial Society of Bone and Joint Surgery doi:10.1302/0301-620X.88B4. 17060 $2.00 J Bone Joint Surg [Br] 2006; 88-B:421-6. The management of large bony defects and cartilage loss continues to be a challenge to trauma and orthopaedic surgeons. The treatment of these conditions has evolved over the years and has comprised of many techniques, such as autologous bone grafting, distr...

Chondroitin sulfate (CS) is one of the major glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). GAGs are linear polymers comprising disaccharide residues and found as side chains proteoglycans. CS has significant stimulatory effects on cell behavior widely used in tissue-engineered drug delivery devices. However, it difficult to incorporate a sufficient amount into biopolymer-based scaffolds such collagen take full ad...