AIM To investigate a possible correlation between the histological and morphometric properties of herniated intervertebral disc, clinical and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) characteristics of patients with lumbar disc degeneration (LDD). MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty six patients with LDD were clinically evaluated using Japanese Orthopaedic Association Score (JOAS), visual analogue scale (VA...

Cartilage remodeling is currently among the most popular topics in osteoarthritis research. Remodeling includes removal of the existing cartilage and replacement by neo-cartilage. As a loss of balance between removal and replacement of articular cartilage develops (particularly, the rate of removal surpasses the rate of replacement), joints will begin to degrade. In the last few years, signific...

Cartilage remodeling is currently among the most popular topics in osteoarthritis research. Remodeling includes removal of the existing cartilage and replacement by neo-cartilage. As a loss of balance between removal and replacement of articular cartilage develops (particularly, the rate of removal surpasses the rate of replacement), joints will begin to degrade. In the last few years, signific...

A chondrocyte and its surrounding pericellular matrix (PCM) are defined as a chondron. Single chondrocytes and chondrons isolated from bovine articular cartilage were compressed by micromanipulation between two parallel surfaces in order to investigate their biomechanical properties and to discover the mechanical significance of the PCM. The force imposed on the cells was measured directly duri...

The pericellular microenvironment around articular cartilage chondrocytes must play a key role in regulating the interaction between the cell and its extracellular matrix. The potential contribution of type VI collagen to this interaction was investigated in this study using isolated canine tibial chondrons embedded in agarose monolayers. The immunohistochemical distribution of an anti-type VI ...

Objective(s): Three-dimensional biomimetic scaffolds have widespread applications in biomedical tissue engineering due to similarity of their nanofibrous architecture to native extracellular matrix. Co-culture system has stimulatory effect on chondrogenesis of adult mesenchymal stem cells. This work presents a co-culture strategy using human articular chondrons and adipose-derived stem cells (A...