The influence of long-term treadmill exercise on bone mass and articular cartilage in ovariectomized rats

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Research Article

Hsuan-Chiang Chen¹  Chang-Hung Huang¹  Cheng-Kung Cheng²  Chun-Hsiung Huang³  Ting-Kuo Chang³ 

[1] Department of Medical Research, Biomechanics Laboratory, Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan;Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan;Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Medical Research, Biomechanics Laboratory, Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan;

关键词: Bone Mineral Density;    Bone Mass;    Articular Cartilage;    Proximal Tibia;    Treadmill Exercise;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2474-11-185

 received in 2010-04-09, accepted in 2010-08-20,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundLoss of bone quality and deterioration of articular cartilage are commonly seen after menopause. While exercise may protect against tissue degeneration, a clear link has yet to be established. The aim of the present study is to investigate the influence of long-term treadmill exercise on changes in bone mass and articular cartilage in ovariectomized rats.MethodsSixty female Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly assigned to 4 groups: ovariectomized (OVX), ovariectomized plus treadmill exercise (OVX-RUN), treadmill exercise alone (RUN), and control (CON) groups. After 36 weeks, the following variables were compared among the 4 groups. Bone mass was evaluated by trabecular bone volume and bone mineral density (BMD). Articular cartilage in the knee joints was evaluated by histology analysis and a modified Mankin score.ResultsRats in the ovariectomized groups (OVX and OVX-RUN) had significantly lower BMD and bone mass than the non-ovariectomized rats (CON and RUN), indicating that exercise did little to preserve bone mass. However, the sedentary OVX group had a significantly worse modified Mankin score (7.7 ± 1.4) than the OVX-RUN group (4.8 ± 1.0), whose scores did not differ significantly from the other 2 non-operated groups. The articular cartilage in the sedentary OVX rats was relatively thinner, hypocellular, and had more clefts than in the other 3 groups.ConclusionThis study suggests that long-term exercise protects articular cartilage in OVX rats but does not retard the loss of bone mass seen in after menopause.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Chang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.