Clinical Study About The Expression Between The Concentration Of Cytokines In Knee Joint Fluid And The X-stage Of Post-traumatic Arthritis

Objective:Purpose of the study was to detect the concentration of tumor necrosis factorα(TNF-α) and interleukin 17 (IL-17) in the synovial fluid of post-traumatic arthritis (PTA).To observe the relationship between both and knee post-traumatic arthritis X-stage (Kellgren & Lawrence criteria). To investigate the internal relations between inflammatory cytokines and the severity of knee post-traumatic arthritis , and in search of biochemical indicators to reflect the degree of post-traumatic arthritis.Materials and methods:We had selected randomly 60 patients with knee post-traumatic arthritis from our outpatients or inpatient in 2009 (since January to December) ,43 of them were male and 17 female, aged 17-72 years. Patient inclusion criteria was a clear history of knee injury, symptoms of knee post-traumatic arthritis included pain, functional disorders, intra-articular injection of drugs such as steroids or hyaluronan was excluded, X-ray confirmed knee post-traumatic arthritis imaging. The patients according to X- grading(Kellgren &Lawrence criteria) standard were divided into 3 groups, 20 patients in each group, took and submitted its knee joint fluid, measured TNF-αand IL-17 concentration. Another randomly selected 20 healthy volunteers (no other knee diseases) in knee joint fluid took the same censorship as controls. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method was adopted to inspect the concentration of TNF-αand IL-17. Introducing SPSS16.0 statistical software to analyze and conduct t-test and observe if they were any statistical difference about the concentration of TNF-αand IL-17 between the four groups.Results:The concentration of TNF-αand IL-17 in knee post-traumatic arthritis group was higher than the control group, and had statistically difference (P < 0.05). The concentration of TNF-αand IL-17 in knee post-traumatic arthritis in each group gradually increased with increasing X–ray stage, and had statistically difference (P < 0.05).Conclusion:The concentration of TNF-αand IL-17 in the knee joint fluid gradually increased follow the aggravation of post-traumatic arthritis.The level of TNF-αand IL-17 in the knee joint fluid had positively correlation with X-ray grade of PTA ,which suggested that the severity of PTA with TNF-αand IL-17 was closely related to the concentration. Synovial fluid TNF-αand IL-17 levels could be used as indicators to estimate whether the joint was normal.