Morphological and biochemical studies during differentiation and calcification of fracture callus cartilage.

Differentiation and calcification of cartilage of a fracture callus morphologically, ultrastructurally, and histochemically resembles cartilage of growing epiphyseal plate. The fracture callus includes the various cartilage cell types found in the epiphyseal plate. Proliferating and hypertrophic cartilage had higher activities of cytochrome oxidase, alkaline phosphatase and glutamate aspartate transaminase than fibrocartilage. Enzymes controlling glycogen synthesis and glycolysis had higher levels of activity in fibrocartilage than in hypertrophic cartilage. Lysosomal enzymes, catalase, 6-phospho-gluconic acid and glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase were uniformly distributed. Alkaline phosphatase was associated with extracellular vesicles found in hypertrophic cartilage. EM dense granules were found in mitochondria in hypertrophic cartilage. There was an increase of total lipids in hypertropic and calcified cartilage as compared to resting cartilage.