Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common degenerative disease whose early management includes promising mechanical treatments. New treatments are initially validated using an animal model in which OA is induced. The MMT (mechanical induction) and MIA (chemical induction) models of OA induction are widespread, but their use to generate early OA is poorly documented. We analyzed and compared early-stage knee OA-induction via these two methods in 16 rats divided into two groups. After 4 weeks of induction, the knees were sampled and studied using both histology (Toluidine Blue and Sirius Red) and surface topology, an innovative technique for characterizing osteoarthritic cartilage. The Mankin-modified score confirms that the two OA-induction models evolved at the same speed. At this early stage, the two models can be differentiated morphologically, although no significant differences were revealed by either cellularity or birefringence analysis. However, the topological analysis generated two forms of quantitative data, the deformation ratio and the cohesion index, that differentiated between the two groups. Thus, the early-stage OA induced by these two models is revealed to differ. The patterns of cartilage damage induced point to MMT as the better choice to assess mechanical approaches to clinical OA treatment.

骨关节炎 (OA) 是一种常见的退行性疾病，其早期治疗包括有希望的机械治疗。新的治疗方法最初是使用诱发 OA 的动物模型进行验证的。OA 诱导的 MMT（机械诱导）和 MIA（化学诱导）模型很普遍，但它们用于产生早期 OA 的记录很少。我们通过这两种方法在分为两组的 16 只大鼠中分析和比较了早期膝关节 OA 诱导。诱导 4 周后，使用组织学（甲苯胺蓝和天狼星红）和表面拓扑学（一种用于表征骨关节炎软骨的创新技术）对膝盖进行采样和研究。Mankin 修正的分数证实了两个 OA 诱导模型以相同的速度进化。在这个早期阶段，这两个模型可以在形态上区分，尽管通过细胞结构或双折射分析未发现显着差异。然而，拓扑分析产生了两种形式的定量数据，变形比和内聚指数，这在两组之间进行了区分。因此，这两种模型诱导的早期 OA 显示出不同。软骨损伤诱导的模式表明 MMT 是评估临床 OA 治疗机械方法的更好选择。