Effects Of Low Amplitude Compressive Stress On Metabolic Activity In Cultured Chondrocytes

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common and severely harmful diseases, which is more significant than our recognition. Currently, its morbidity and the number of its victims are both the highest among the three most common diseases in older people throughout the world.The characteristic of cartilaginous metabolism and the effect of cytokines in cartilaginous metabolism are becoming one of the research focuses of OA study.However, the mechanism of mechanical forces in OA occurrence and development is poorly understood. The origin of cytokines and the way stimulating cytokines production, especially the exact relationship between mechanical forces and cytokine production are not studied sufficiently.In order to repair chondral defects, autogenous chondrocyte transplantation is becoming encouraging treatment concerned by most investigators. However, this method will not succeed ultimately if no suitable cell culture environment in vitro can be found just as the environment in vivo both in biomechanical condition(such as stress system) and a biochemical condition is constructed and if we overlook the potential effect of mechanical and biochemical condition on autogenous grafts after transplantation.When reviewing the problems existing in current study and treatment of OA, it is easy to find that lacking sufficient understanding the relationship between chondrocytes and different causes of OA on cellular and molecular levels is the most important difficult.It is for four purposes that we induced compressive stress as an effect on chondrocytes metabolism in this study. First is trying to clarify the effect of compressive stress applied in different ways such as different strength, different acting time and different frequency on chondrocytes matrix metabolism and proliferation. Second is to define the effect two types of compressive stress, continuous and intermittent, on cytokine produced by chondrocytes. Third is to explore the stress condition which have a reversed effect on chondrocyte metabolism for expliciting the relationship between...