Early therapeutic intervention to mitigate inflammatory responses following joint injury may offer a potential strategy to prevent post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA). In-vitro studies have demonstrated uniaxial dynamic compression mitigates the catabolic and apoptotic responses of articular cartilage (AC) in response to mechanical injury. The objectives of this study were (1) to develop a custom device that can apply dynamic tibial axial loading (TAL) to knee AC by mimicking therapeutic, in-vitro loading conditions and (2) to investigate the potential of TAL to reduce the inflammatory response of AC post traumatic acute joint injury using an ex-vivo porcine model. A TAL device was fabricated to apply dynamic compressive loading to knee AC by combining tibial axial compressive loading with continuous passive motion. Computational analyses demonstrated that the loading condition applied to the knee by the TAL device closely simulate uniaxial dynamic compression reported in previous in-vitro studies. Following single impact injury, injured porcine knees were subjected to TAL with a magnitude of 1/4 body weight at a frequency of 1 Hz for 30 min. AC samples were harvested 8 h post injury for analysis of pro-inflammatory cytokine expression (IL-1β and TNF-α). Expression of both cytokines was upregulated following injury; however, the change was notably mitigated in the specimens subjected to TAL. Thus, TAL may be an effective and potentially, practical-to-administer early intervention strategy to mitigate rapidly occurring detrimental events following acute AC injury, potentially slowing down progression to PTOA.

减轻关节损伤后炎症反应的早期治疗干预可能提供一种潜在的策略来预防创伤后骨关节炎 (PTOA)。体外研究表明，单轴动态压缩可减轻关节软骨 (AC) 对机械损伤的分解代谢和细胞凋亡反应。本研究的目的是 (1) 开发一种定制装置，该装置可以通过模拟治疗性体外载荷条件将动态胫骨轴向载荷 (TAL) 应用于膝关节 AC，以及 (2) 研究 TAL 减少炎症的潜力使用离体猪模型研究 AC 创伤后急性关节损伤的反应。通过将胫骨轴向压缩载荷与连续被动运动相结合，制造了一个 TAL 装置以对膝关节 AC 施加动态压缩载荷。计算分析表明，TAL 设备施加到膝盖的负载条件非常模拟先前体外研究中报告的单轴动态压缩。在单次冲击损伤后，受伤的猪膝在 1 Hz 的频率下经受 1/4 体重的 TAL 持续 30 分钟。损伤后 8 小时收集 AC 样品，用于分析促炎细胞因子的表达（IL-1β 和 TNF-α）。损伤后两种细胞因子的表达均上调；然而，在经受 TAL 的样本中，这种变化明显减轻。因此，TAL 可能是一种有效的、潜在的、实用的早期干预策略，可减轻急性 AC 损伤后迅速发生的有害事件，有可能减缓 PTOA 的进展。