Techniques for assessment of wear between human cartilage surfaces

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease of joints, affecting a large number of people worldwide. One of the symptoms of OA is wear of articular cartilage; it is thought that among other factors this may be due to failure of lubrication. Injection of bio-lubricants into a joint may remedy this problem. Wear of cartilage and its prevention is a focus of much interest. The present paper describes wear tests performed using human cartilage on cartilage under various working conditions. Several techniques assessing wear are described, such as changes in surface morphology using optical profilometry and variation in the content of collagen and proteoglycans (PG) in the lubricating solution. Of all these techniques the PG content analysis was found to be the most efficient one.