Short-term consolidation of articular cartilage in the long-term context of osteoarthritis

The future of in-field sports biomechanics: wearables plus modelling compute real-time in vivo tissue loading to prevent and repair musculoskeletal injuries

This paper explores the use of biomechanics in identifying the mechanistic causes of musculoskeletal tissue injury and degeneration. It appraises how biomechanics has been used to develop training programmes aiming to maintain or recover tissue health. Tissue health depends on the functional mechanical environment experienced by tissues during daily and rehabilitation activities. These environments are the result of the interactions between tissue motion, loading, biology, and morphology. Maintaining health of and/or repairing musculoskeletal tissues requires targeting the "ideal" in vivo tissue mechanics (i.e., loading and deformation), which may be enabled by appropriate real-time biofeedback. Recent research shows that biofeedback technologies may increase their quality and effectiveness by integrating a personalised neuromusculoskeletal modelling driven by real-time motion capture and medical imaging. Model personalisation is crucial in obtaining physically and physiologically valid predictions of tissue biomechanics. Model real-time execution is crucial and achieved by code optimisation and artificial intelligence methods. Furthermore, recent work has also shown that laboratory-based motion capture biomechanical measurements and modelling can be performed outside the laboratory with wearable sensors and artificial intelligence. The next stage is to combine these technologies into well-designed easy to use products to guide training to maintain or recover tissue health in the real-world.

Maintaining soldier musculoskeletal health using personalised digital humans, wearables and/or computer vision

OBJECTIVES

The physical demands of military service place soldiers at risk of musculoskeletal injuries and are major concerns for military capability. This paper outlines the development new training technologies to prevent and manage these injuries.

DESIGN

Narrative review.

METHODS

Technologies suitable for integration into next-generation training devices were examined. We considered the capability of technologies to target tissue level mechanics, provide appropriate real-time feedback, and their useability in-the-field.

RESULTS

Musculoskeletal tissues' health depends on their functional mechanical environment experienced in military activities, training and rehabilitation. These environments result from the interactions between tissue motion, loading, biology, and morphology. Maintaining health of and/or repairing joint tissues requires targeting the "ideal" in vivo tissue mechanics (i.e., loading and strain), which may be enabled by real-time biofeedback. Recent research has shown that these biofeedback technologies are possible by integrating a patient's personalised digital twin and wireless wearable devices. Personalised digital twins are personalised neuromusculoskeletal rigid body and finite element models that work in real-time by code optimisation and artificial intelligence. Model personalisation is crucial in obtaining physically and physiologically valid predictions.

CONCLUSIONS

Recent work has shown that laboratory-quality biomechanical measurements and modelling can be performed outside the laboratory with a small number of wearable sensors or computer vision methods. The next stage is to combine these technologies into well-designed easy to use products.

Injury-related cell death and proteoglycan loss in articular cartilage: Numerical model combining necrosis, reactive oxygen species, and inflammatory cytokines

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common musculoskeletal disease that leads to deterioration of articular cartilage, joint pain, and decreased quality of life. When OA develops after a joint injury, it is designated as post-traumatic OA (PTOA). The etiology of PTOA remains poorly understood, but it is known that proteoglycan (PG) loss, cell dysfunction, and cell death in cartilage are among the first signs of the disease. These processes, influenced by biomechanical and inflammatory stimuli, disturb the normal cell-regulated balance between tissue synthesis and degeneration. Previous computational mechanobiological models have not explicitly incorporated the cell-mediated degradation mechanisms triggered by an injury that eventually can lead to tissue-level compositional changes. Here, we developed a 2-D mechanobiological finite element model to predict necrosis, apoptosis following excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and inflammatory cytokine (interleukin-1)-driven apoptosis in cartilage explant. The resulting PG loss over 30 days was simulated. Biomechanically triggered PG degeneration, associated with cell necrosis, excessive ROS production, and cell apoptosis, was predicted to be localized near a lesion, while interleukin-1 diffusion-driven PG degeneration was manifested more globally. Interestingly, the model also showed proteolytic activity and PG biosynthesis closer to the levels of healthy tissue when pro-inflammatory cytokines were rapidly inhibited or cleared from the culture medium, leading to partial recovery of PG content. The numerical predictions of cell death and PG loss were supported by previous experimental findings. Furthermore, the simulated ROS and inflammation mechanisms had longer-lasting effects (over 3 days) on the PG content than localized necrosis. The mechanobiological model presented here may serve as a numerical tool for assessing early cartilage degeneration mechanisms and the efficacy of interventions to mitigate PTOA progression.

Osteoarthritis year in review 2016: mechanics

Inappropriate biomechanics, namely wear-and-tear, has been long believed to be a main cause of osteoarthritis (OA). However, this view is now being re-evaluated, especially when examined alongside mechanobiology and new biomechanical studies. These are multiscale experimental and computational studies focussing on cell- and tissue-level mechanobiology through to organ- and whole-body-level biomechanics, which focuses on the biomechanical and biochemical environment of the joint tissues. This review examined papers from April 2015 to April 2016, with a focus on multiscale experimental and computational biomechanical studies of OA. Assessing the onset or progression of OA at organ- and whole-body-levels, gait analysis, medical imaging and neuromusculoskeletal modelling revealed the extent to which tissue damage changes the view of inappropriate biomechanics. Traditional gait analyses studies reported that conservative treatments can alter joint biomechanics, thereby improving pain and function experienced by those with OA. Results of animal models of OA were consistent with these human studies, showing interactions among bone, cartilage and meniscus biomechanics and the onset and/or progression OA. Going down size scales, experimental and computational studies probed the nanosize biomechanics of molecules, cells and extracellular matrix, and demonstrated how the interactions between biomechanics and morphology affect cartilage dynamic poroelastic behaviour and pathways to OA. Finally, integration of multiscale experimental data and computational models were proposed to predict cartilage extracellular matrix remodelling and the development of OA. Summarising, experimental and computational methods provided a nuanced biomechanical understanding of the sub-cellular, cellular, tissue, organ and whole-body mechanisms involved in OA.

Osteoarthritis year in review 2015: mechanics

Motivated by the conceptual framework of multi-scale biomechanics, this narrative review highlights recent major advances with a focus on gait and joint kinematics, then tissue-level mechanics, cell mechanics and mechanotransduction, matrix mechanics, and finally the nanoscale mechanics of matrix macromolecules. A literature review was conducted from January 2014 to April 2015 using PubMed to identify major developments in mechanics related to osteoarthritis (OA). Studies of knee adduction, flexion, rotation, and contact mechanics have extended our understanding of medial compartment loading. In turn, advances in measurement methodologies have shown how injuries to both the meniscus and ligaments, together, can alter joint kinematics. At the tissue scale, novel findings have emerged regarding the mechanics of the meniscus as well as cartilage superficial zone. Moving to the cell level, poroelastic and poro-viscoelastic mechanisms underlying chondrocyte deformation have been reported, along with the response to osmotic stress. Further developments have emerged on the role of calcium signaling in chondrocyte mechanobiology, including exciting findings on the function of mechanically activated cation channels newly found to be expressed in chondrocytes. Finally, AFM-based nano-rheology systems have enabled studies of thin murine tissues and brush layers of matrix molecules over a wide range of loading rates including high rates corresponding to impact injury. With OA acknowledged to be a disease of the joint as an organ, understanding mechanical behavior at each length scale helps to elucidate the connections between cell biology, matrix biochemistry and tissue structure/function that may play a role in the pathomechanics of OA.

Predicting Knee Osteoarthritis

Treatment options for osteoarthritis (OA) beyond pain relief or total knee replacement are very limited. Because of this, attention has shifted to identifying which factors increase the risk of OA in vulnerable populations in order to be able to give recommendations to delay disease onset or to slow disease progression. The gold standard is then to use principles of risk management, first to provide subject-specific estimates of risk and then to find ways of reducing that risk. Population studies of OA risk based on statistical associations do not provide such individually tailored information. Here we argue that mechanistic models of cartilage tissue maintenance and damage coupled to statistical models incorporating model uncertainty, united within the framework of structural reliability analysis, provide an avenue for bridging the disciplines of epidemiology, cell biology, genetics and biomechanics. Such models promise subject-specific OA risk assessment and personalized strategies for mitigating or even avoiding OA. We illustrate the proposed approach with a simple model of cartilage extracellular matrix synthesis and loss regulated by daily physical activity.