Articular cartilage can heal partially after injury: Researchers found a new mechanism

Medical XPress / University of Eastern Finland / Journal of Orthopaedic Research ^ | Oct. 6, 2021 | Gustavo A. Orozco et al,

[ConservativeMind]

Post-traumatic osteoarthritis is a musculoskeletal disorder shadowing especially the life of young and active population. Inhibition of cartilage damage progression with early intervention is crucial. To predict how an intervention would affect the state of an injured knee joint, knowledge of biomechanical and inflammatory aspects of osteoarthritis progression is necessary. For the first time, researchers have now captured both mechanisms in a physics-based computational model predicting cartilage degradation and a possible recovery scenario after anterior cruciate ligament injury and reconstruction.

Rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament is a typical sports injury. An injured knee joint can be treated with ligament reconstruction surgery which aims to restore the joint environment to a healthy state. However, this goal is not always achieved. Instead, the biomechanical loading may be elevated locally and the joint inflammation may cause swelling and aching of the knee. Both of these mechanisms also promote the degradation of articular cartilage located at the ends of bones, possibly leading to a crippling disease called osteoarthritis.

Currently, no cure exists for osteoarthritis. Thus, prevention of the disease progression is a prestigious aim, which can only be achieved if the disease mechanisms are understood and their effects can be predicted.

Briefly, the biomechanical degradation due to tissue shearing occurred especially near chondral lesions, whereas the effect of inflammation was seen in wider areas," says the paper's first author, Postdoctoral Researcher Gustavo Orozco, Ph.D.

"Interestingly, our model also predicts that if the inflammation could be halted before becoming chronic, the recovery of the cartilage composition closer to healthy levels is possible. This scenario could be feasible with fast clearance of pro-inflammatory molecules as well as supplementing the synovial fluid with drugs prohibiting excessive cytokine activation," adds Early-Stage Researcher Atte Eskelinen, M.Sc.

[ConservativeMind]

There are other studies showing that boron and eggshell membrane supplements can help stop osteoarthritis pain and issues, and with eggshell membrane, slightly bring back cartilage.

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[ckilmer]

interesting. I’m seeing boron crop up fairly frequently as being player in various processes.

[spacejunkie2001]

I just started borax about a week ago and really like it.

[ConservativeMind]

I believe something like 25 mg of borax gives you 5 mg of boron, but I'd encourage everyone to instead get boron in a supplement form.

The Upper Tolerable Limit for boron is 20 mg/day. I've been taking at least 3 mg a day since the mid-1990s and in the last three years, bumped it up to 10-12 mg/day from various forms of boron.

It appears there are three basic mechanisms to utilize boron and the only one that seems to have some direct activity in each is calcium fructoborate—the form in apples and other foods.

The rest have to be converted through body mechanisms, but together should be sufficient.

[spacejunkie2001]

from all I’ve read and studied, the consensus is to definitely take borax, which has the main ingredient of boron, instead of a boron supplement.

I’m doing an 1/8 tsp in 1 litre of water per day (skipping sat & sun). That’s approximately 56mg of boron/day. Higher than most but one of the 2 recommended ways on earthclinic. I’m not having any adverse effects.