Corvelli Michael, Che Bernadette, Saeui Christopher, Singh Anirudha, Elisseeff Jennifer
Translational Tissue Engineering Center, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Translational Tissue Engineering Center, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA; Department of Urology, Brady Urological Institute, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Methods. 2015 Aug;84:90-8. doi: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2015.03.019. Epub 2015 Apr 7.
Hyaluronic acid (HA), a natural biomaterial present in healthy joints but depleted in osteoarthritis (OA), has been employed clinically to provide symptomatic relief of joint pain. Joint movement combined with a reduced joint lubrication in osteoarthritic knees can result in increased wear and tear, chondrocyte apoptosis, and inflammation, leading to cascading cartilage deterioration. Therefore, development of an appropriate cartilage model that can be evaluated for its friction properties with potential lubricants in different conditions is necessary, which can closely resemble a mechanically induced OA cartilage. Additionally, a comparison of different models with and without endogenous lubricating surface zone proteins, such as PRG4 promotes a well-rounded understanding of cartilage lubrication. In this study, we present our findings on the lubricating effects of HA on different articular cartilage model surfaces in comparison to synovial fluid, a physiological lubricating biomaterial. The mechanical testings data demonstrated that HA reduced average static and kinetic friction coefficient values of the cartilage samples by 75% and 70%, respectively. Furthermore, HA mimicked the friction characteristics of freshly harvested natural synovial fluid throughout all tested and modeled OA conditions with no statistically significant difference. These characteristics led us to exclusively identify HA as an effective boundary layer lubricant in the technology that we develop to treat OA (Singh et al., 2014).
透明质酸（HA）是一种存在于健康关节中但在骨关节炎（OA）中会减少的天然生物材料，已被临床用于缓解关节疼痛症状。骨关节炎膝关节的关节运动与关节润滑减少相结合，会导致磨损加剧、软骨细胞凋亡和炎症，进而导致软骨逐渐退化。因此，开发一种合适的软骨模型很有必要，该模型可以在不同条件下与潜在润滑剂一起评估其摩擦特性，并且能够紧密模拟机械诱导的骨关节炎软骨。此外，比较有无内源性润滑表面区蛋白（如PRG4）的不同模型，有助于全面了解软骨润滑。在本研究中，我们展示了与生理润滑生物材料滑液相比，HA对不同关节软骨模型表面的润滑效果的研究结果。力学测试数据表明，HA分别使软骨样本的平均静摩擦系数和动摩擦系数值降低了75%和70%。此外，在所有测试和模拟的骨关节炎条件下，HA都模拟了新鲜采集的天然滑液的摩擦特性，且无统计学显著差异。这些特性使我们在开发治疗骨关节炎的技术中，唯一确定HA为一种有效的边界层润滑剂（辛格等人，2014年）。
