BACKGROUND Local administration of opioids causes effective analgesia without adverse effects related to the central nervous system. After the beneficial demonstration of peripheral opioid receptors in joint synovia, intra-articular opioid injections were used for pain treatment. Clinical studies have reported the safety and efficacy of hyaluronate injection in the shoulder joint of patients wi...

Introduction: Although, the effect of direct intra-articular injection of bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) on the repair of articular cartilage and the effect of Elaeagnus angustifolia extract on pain relief in patients with osteoarthritis have been investigated, no studies has been conducted to compare the effects of these two therapeutic methods on the mechanical properties of articular cartila...

INTRODUCTION Recent studies have revealed that rapamycin activates autophagy in human chondrocytes preventing the development of osteoarthritis (OA) like changes in vitro, while the systemic injection of rapamycin reduces the severity of experimental osteoarthritis in a murine model of OA in vivo. Since the systemic use of rapamycin is associated with numerous side effects, the goal of the curr...

BACKGROUND Although intra-articular treatment with hyaluronic acid (HA) for symptomatic osteoarthritis has become widely accepted in recent decades, the pattern of its use has seldom been reported. We have explored the epidemiology of intra-articular HA treatment in Taiwan by using the rich data source from nationwide insurance claims. METHODS Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI), which c...

Articular cartilage provides critical load-bearing and tribological properties to the normal function of diarthrodial joints. The unique properties of cartilage, as well as heterogeneous deformations during mechanical compression, are due to the nonuniform microstructural organization of tissue components such as collagens and proteoglycans. A new cartilage deformation by tag registration (CDTR...

The successful non-invasive imaging of articular cartilage in the equine patient is likely one of the most sought after goals in equine veterinary medicine. Articular cartilage may be one of the most difficult tissues to accurately image in its entirety in the in vivo horse. Magnetic Resonance Imaging has proven extremely useful for the successful imaging of articular cartilage in humans. For t...

In view of frequent present use of invasive procedures on limb joints, it is astonishing that articular joint inflammation is a rare event. We questioned whether antimicrobial peptides play a role in protecting human articular cartilage and synovial membrane against inflammatory agents. Our results implicate defensins in the protection of human articular joints against pathogens.