Intraarticular injection for rabbit knee osteoarthritis: effectiveness among hyaluronic acid, platelet-rich plasma, and mesenchymal stem cells

Both hyaluronic acid (HA) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection are the common prescribed treatments for osteoarthritis (OA) patients. HA can serve as a good lubricant to reduce the fraction force of cartilage surface while PRP provide several growth factors to assist tissue repair. Considering the efficiency of tissue regeneration, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) injections becomes an attractive method because of their self-renewal and multi-differentiation potential. Thus, in the study, we compared the treatment effect of PRP and HA with/without MSCs. Eighteen rabbits underwent anterior cruciate ligament transection for OA knee induction, and then injected with saline, PRP, HA, HA+PRP, PRP+MSCs or HA+MSCs intraarticularly for treatment effect evaluation. Compared with the results of HA group, the cartilage treated with HA+PRP and PRP+MSCs showed better repair results in micromorphology and glycosaminoglycan synthesis. We also found that the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OASRI) scores in HA+PRP and PRP+MSC groups were significant lower than that of the others at month 1 and month 3, separately. This indicates that the combination of HA and PRP could provide short-term tissue protection effect while PRP and MSC could provide a long-term tissue regeneration effect. PRP+MSC could be considered as a promising biological method for OA treatment. (C) 2018 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.