Relationship between triphasic mechanical properties of articular cartilage and osteoarthritic grade

The purpose of this study was to explore the triphasic mechanical properties of osteoarthritic cartilage with different pathological grades. First, samples of cartilage from rabbits with different stages of osteoarthritis (OA) were graded. Following this, the cartilage was strained by a swelling experiment, and changes were measured using a high-frequency ultrasound system. The result, together with fixed charge density and water volume fraction of cartilage samples, was used to estimate the uniaxial modulus of the cartilage tissue, based on a triphasic model. For the control cartilage samples, the uniaxial elastic modulus on the cartilage surface was lower than those in the middle and deep layers. With an increase in the OA grade, the uniaxial elastic modulus of the surface, middle and deep layers decreased. A significant difference was found in the surface elastic modulus of different OA grades (P < 0.01), while no significant differences were identified for OA cartilages of Grades 1 and 2 in the middle and deep layers (P < 0.01). Compared with Grades 1 and 2, there was a significant reduction in the elastic modulus in the middle and deep layers of Grade 3 OA cartilage (P < 0.05). Overall, this study may provide a new quantitative method to evaluate the severity of OA using the mechanical properties of cartilage tissue.