Biomechanical Study Of Articular Cartilage In Early Stage Of Osteoarthritis

Ibrahim Hamdi, Muhammad Khairani (2021) Biomechanical Study Of Articular Cartilage In Early Stage Of Osteoarthritis. Project Report. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

With the newest advanced in technology, more progressive stages of OA can be detected and studied to provide precaution and prevent the osteoarthritis development. However, osteoarthritis development usually has less attention during the early stage due to its lack of symptom and severity indication. In previous studies, pathological changes of osteoarthritis joint always circling around one main contributor, which is cartilage degeneration. The cartilage degeneration is the cost of biomechanical properties alteration due to the changes in water content of the cartilage. A normal cartilage has a water content range of 77.5% ± 2.5%, hence, allowing the concept of water content cartilage to determine the biomechanical properties of cartilage during early-stage osteoarthritis. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the possible correlation between water content and cartilage degeneration in order to determine the biomechanical properties of articular cartilage during early-stage osteoarthritis. Cartilage specimens obtained from the bovine femoral head of a cow were submerged in PBS solution for 576 hours. Each specimen’s water content was calculated based on its dry weight and wet weight after dehydrated to get a range of 80% ± 5% water content for the characterization of early osteoarthritis properties. Each water content has its own Young’s modulus and permeability inserted in the Finite Element Analysis to represent the biomechanical properties of the cartilage based on its water content. A similar pattern of graph defined by Finite Element Analysis for contact pressure and pore pressure was found. It illustrated the relationship between the permeability of cartilage and the fluid pressurization. Each pressure had a percentage difference range of 20% ± 5% between the water content of 75% and 80%, while a significant percentage difference of 42.5% ± 2.5% was found between the water content of 80% and 85% for both pressures. Correlation analyses was then performed to determine the relationship between the cartilage displacement and the increase of water content. The cartilage displacement was positively correlated with the increase of water content (r = 0.967). Meanwhile, correlation of contact force and water content shows an inverse correlation coefficient (r = -0.975) that represents the effect of high-water content to the lubrication of cartilage surface and its fluid pressurization. Hence, in this study, the results indicate that the increase of water content accelerates the cartilage deterioration as it provides low fluid pressurization to maintain the equilibrium form of cartilage during compression.

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