Comparison of the chondroprotective effect of a novel hydrogel compound and traditional hyaluronate on rat cartilage in a papain-induced osteoarthritis model

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this experimental study is to evaluate the efŞcacy of a novel intraarticular drug in apapain induced osteoarthritis (OA) rat model and compare with the traditional hyaluronat (HA) viscosupplementation.Methods: An early stage OA model was induced by the intra-articular injection of papain enzyme in theright knee joints of 44 Sprague-Dawley rats. Eleven rats (eleven right knees: papain group, 11 left knees:control group) were chosen randomly 28 days after the last injection and sacriŞced for verifying OA. Theremaining rats (n¼ 33) were randomly divided into 3 groups. Group 1 was injected 0,2 mL of sterilesaline solution (0,9%), group 2 was injected 0,2 mL HA and the group 3 was injected 0,2 mL of HA-CSNAG(hyaluronat, chondritin sulfate, N-acetyl-D-glucosamine) combination in the right knees. Injections wereperformed on the 35th, the 42nd and the 49th days consecutively. Two weeks after the last injection, allgroups were sacriŞced to evaluate the severity of OA according to Mankin system.Results: Early stage of OA was veriŞed regarding total Mankin scores (p < 0.05). There was statisticallysigniŞcant difference between Group 1 and Group 2 (p < 0.05), between Group 1 and Group 3 (p < 0.05)on the 63th day regarding total Mankin scores. Group 3 showed statistically signiŞcant improvement interms of proteoglycan content of matrix when compared to Group 2 (p< 0,05).Conclusion: HA-CS-NAG compound in hydrogel form is more chondroprotective to rats\' cartilage whencompared to HA during the early stages of OA.© 2016 Turkish Association of Orthopaedics and Traumatology. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This isan open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)