ojme-01-2018-01-06

Journal: Open Journal of Mechanical Engineering (OJME)
Author: Sienna Byrne*

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Doi:10.7508/jme.01.2018.01.06

Background: As a highly prevalent disease, is a leading cause of pain, and poor life quality throughout the world, affecting several million people. Principally affecting the biomechanical and structural properties of focal regions of the articular cartilage tissue found covering the ends of bones within synovial joints, this debilitating arthritic condition develops slowly over several decades and produces substantial degrees of chronic unrelenting progressive disability in adults over age 65. Objectives: 1) To understand in detail the structure of healthy articular cartilage, which is the key tissue of osteoarthritis. 2) Describe in detail which aspects of cartilage damage best represent osteoarthritis. 3) Consider the role of biomechanical factors in developing solutions to treat osteoarthritis joint injuries. Methods: Literature sources from 1980 onwards that have contributed to our knowledge of the topics relevant to this paper were accessed and retrieved. The data bases used were pubmed, medline, cinahl, cochrane, academic search premier, and web of science. Conclusions: Articular cartilage, covering the needs of freely moving joints is a highly active tissue and one that depends largely on mechanical stimuli for its growth and maintenance. Aberrant loading, on the contrary, can lead to cartilage damage as supported by numerous loading studies ranging from immobilization to excessive weightbearing.