Antioxidant enzymatic activities and lipid peroxidation in cultured human chondrocytes from vertebral plate cartilage.

In vitro models based on primary cultured human chondrocytes could be useful to study the ROS-mediated inflammatory processes that seem to involve chondrocytes in vivo. In this work, we studied the enzymatic antioxidative capability of human chondrocytes removed from vertebral plates during micro-discectomy and cultured 18 days, measuring total superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GSHPx) activities. We also evaluated in the same cells the amount of malondialdehyde (MDA) in order to verify the effect of the variation of the cellular enzymatic antioxidative capability on the degree of membrane lipid peroxidation. Total SOD activity increased, even if not significantly, between the 12th and the 18th day. A significant variation of GSHPx (P<0.01) and of catalase (P<0.001) activity was observed between the 3rd and the 6th day with no further variation until the 18th day. A significant increase (P<0.001) of lipid peroxidation from the 3rd to the 18th day was also observed. These results seem to indicate that only fresh human cultured chondrocytes are suitable to study, through in vitro models, the in vivo behavior of the antioxidative status of these cells.