Management of injuries to the articular cartilage is complex and challenging; it becomes especially problematic in weight-bearing joints such as the hip. Several causes of articular cartilage damage have been described, including trauma, labral tears, and femoroacetabular impingement, among others. Because articular cartilage has little capacity for healing, nonsurgical management options are l...

In the knee joint, the purpose of the cartilage-bone interface is to maintain structural integrity of the osteochondral unit during walking, kneeling, pivoting, and jumping--during which tensile, compressive, and shear forces are transmitted from the viscoelastic articular cartilage layer to the much stiffer mineralized end of the long bone. Mature articular cartilage is integrated with subchon...

After injury, inflammation, or degeneration, articular cartilage has limited self-repair ability. We aimed to explore the feasibility of repair of articular cartilage defects with tissue-engineered cartilage constructed by acellular cartilage matrices (ACMs) seeded with adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs). The ADSCs were isolated from 3-month-old New Zealand albino rabbit by using collagenase an...

In an attempt to repair articular cartilage, allograft articular chondrocytes embedded in collagen gel, were transplanted into full-thickness defects in rabbit articular cartilage. Twenty-four weeks after the transplantation, the defects were filled with hyaline cartilage, specifically synthesising Type II collagen. These chondrocytes were autoradiographically proven to have originated from the...

Introduction: In a recent survey on 25,124 knee arthroscopies, cartilage lesions were found most frequently within the patella (36%) and the medial femoral condyle (34%). However, there is a clear topographical difference in cartilage surface and cartilage thickness between these two anatomical sites. Furthermore, when looking at biochemical and biomechanical properties, this regional variation...

The main pathological characteristic of osteoarthritis (OA) is cartilage damage. We explored cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) and matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) changes during articular cartilage injury and repair. Rabbits were randomly divided into the following: a blank control group; groups M1, M2, and M3, in which breaking was performed for 2, 4, and 6 weeks, respectively; and...

Articular cartilage functions by providing a specialized mechanically competent extracellular matrix to withstand load bearing, thus protecting the underlying bones and allowing their near friction-free articulation in the joints. The resident chondrocytes maintain this function throughout life and do so by retaining a stable phenotype that resists hypertrophy and vascular invasion from the bon...

PURPOSE It is well known that implanting a bioactive scaffold into a cartilage defect site can enhance cartilage repair after bone marrow stimulation (BMS). However, most of the current scaffolds are derived from xenogenous tissue and/or artificial polymers. The implantation of these scaffolds adds risks of pathogen transmission, undesirable inflammation, and other immunological reactions, as w...

BACKGROUND We explored the effect of parathyroid hormone (PTH)-induced bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) complexed with fibrin glue (FG) in the repair of articular cartilage injury in rabbits. MATERIAL AND METHODS Forty-eight rabbits randomized into four groups were subjected to articular surgery (cartilage loss). The PTH and non-PTH intervention groups included transplantation with PTH/BMSC/FG xe...

Bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can be used to repair articular cartilage defects, these cells should be properly stimulated so that they could differentiate morphologically and hold cellular synthetic features closer to maturely differentiated chondrocytes. It is well known that tissue specific environment plays an important role in cell fate determination. Once improved isol...