Interleukin-17 Can Induce Osteoarthritis in Rabbit Knee Joints Similar to Hulth’s Method

الملخص EN

Interleukin-17 (IL-17) is closely related to osteoarthritis (OA), but animal studies that employ IL-17 to induce OA are currently lacking.

Therefore, this study evaluated the effect of IL-17 in the rabbit knee joint.

The right knees served as the control group.

The left knees were divided randomly into 4 groups: a Hulth group and 3 IL-17 groups (1-ng, 10-ng, and 50-ng groups).

OA was induced in the Hulth group using Hulth’s method.

The IL-17 groups were injected with 1, 10, or 50 ng of IL-17 as indicated.

Specimens were collected at 72 h, 1 week, 3 weeks, 6 weeks, and 12 weeks after surgery or the last injection.

Subsequently, the following experiments were conducted: X-ray analysis, histological evaluation, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of the mRNA expression levels of cartilage degeneration-related markers.

At 12 weeks, like the Hulth group, the 10-ng and 50-ng IL-17 groups displayed typical manifestations of OA.

The X-ray results, histological scores, and mRNA expression levels showed statistically significant differences between the control group and the 10-ng and 50-ng IL-17 groups.

In sum, injecting 10 ng of IL-17 into the rabbit knee joint can induce OA similar to OA induced by Hulth’s method.