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Date of Award

4-25-2003

Document Type

Restricted Thesis: Campus only access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Biology

First Advisor

Dr. Gary Radice

Abstract

Osteoarthritis is a disease that causes painful, inflamed joints due to the destruction of articular cartilage that covers joint surfaces. Many researchers have proposed various ways of regenerating the disintegrating cartilage, or in some way easing the trouble caused by cartilage lesions, using surgical methods. In the majority of cases, these ideas are first implemented in experimental animal models, usually dogs, mice, rabbits, and pigs. However, one must be careful in extrapolating the results obtained from animal studies and applying them to the human model of disease. It is of the utmost importance to know the normal composition and structure of cartilage in both human and animal models in order for the results obtained from animal studies to be applied to humans. The present study quantitatively describes articular cartilage in canines. Different regions on the canine patella, femoral head, and tibial plateau were examined and compared to the human knee. We found that canine femoral condyle joint cartilage is shorter in height and greater in chondrocyte volume and density than human femoral condyle cartilage. The data obtained through this study will serve as a basis for cross-species comparison of normal articular cartilage composition and will assist in the application of experiments performed on lab animals to human models.

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