Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Articular cartilage is non-vascular, lymphatic and nerve tissue, cartilage cells usually can not perform mitosis, resulting in limited ability to repair itself. Under physiological load, the articular cartilage often places in stress environments. According to its structure and characteristics of cartilage, it should have good biomechanical properties as an artificial cartilage replacement material.
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the application progress of repair materials for the exercise-induced articular cartilage injury and biomechanical characteristics as an alternative biomaterial.
METHODS: Using “articular cartilage, biomaterials, biomechanics” in Chinese and “tissue engineering, articular cartilage, scaffold material, biomechanics” in English as the key words, a computer-based retrieval of China Academic Journal Full-text database and PubMed database was performed from January 1993 to October 2010. Articles related to exercise-induced articular cartilage injury and repair, currently used biomaterials in the repair of articular cartilage injury and its biomechanical characteristics as an alternative biomaterial; duplicated research or Meta analysis was eliminated. Twenty articles mainly focus on the biomechanical characteristics of repair materials in the repair of exercise-induced articular cartilage defects.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Articular cartilage is an anisotropic, heterogeneous, viscoelastic and permeable material that is filled with liquid, it has unique mechanical properties. The biomechanics of injured articular cartilage are different from the original cartilage, and easy to degenerate. Mechanical properties of osteochondral transplantation are the best for recent period; acellular cartilage matrix and small intestine submucosa matrix have certain mechanical strength; the greatest drawback of ordinary polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel is insufficient mechanical properties; polyvinyl alcohol has good flexibility and high elastic property, and similar mechanical properties with human articular cartilage; n-HA slurry and polyamide 66 composite in a solvent, they are similar to natural bone in terms of chemical composition and mechanical properties. Various alternative materials of articular cartilage have different mechanical properties no matter it is synthetic materials, natural materials, or composite materials, cartilage tissues with similar mechanical properties as natural generated cartilage are not currently recycled.