Podium 2: Osteoarthritis, Treatments & Mechanisms

Annie Porter, Emily Newcomb, The College of William & Mary; Jacob Poplawski, Michael Axe, X. Lucas Lu

University of Delaware

Triamcinolone acetonide (TA) is a corticosteroid commonly used to reduce synovial inflammation following traumatic joint injury. Whether TA is harmful to chondrocytes remains unclear, depending on the injury models tested and TA dosage. A fear of clinicians is whether TA injections following injury in joints with otherwise healthy cartilage (lack prior osteoarthritis) will lead to cartilage degeneration and an early onset of osteoarthritis. We used click chemistry techniques to evaluate the metabolic effects of TA on in situ chondrocytes to evaluate its safety in clinical applications. We found chondrocyte viability, proliferation, and anabolic extra-cellular matrix (ECM) activities were not harmed by short-term TA treatment. In contrast to concerns, TA was able to reduce the ECM loss caused by both low-level long-term and high-level short-term inflammation. Previous studies which showed harmful effects of TA on chondrocytes primarily used monolayer cells with much higher doses of TA than we expect actually reaches the chondrocytes in vivo. Our study shows when chondrocytes remain in the natural solid matrix and are treated with more clinically relevant doses of TA, the harmful effects are mediated. This study supports the clinical use of intra-articular TA injections to reduce synovial inflammation in otherwise healthy cartilage.

Research Area: Cartilage