Biomechanical properties of normal tendons, normal palmar aponeuroses, and tissues from patients with Dupuytren's disease subjected to elastase and chondroitinase treatment.

Normal tendons, normal palmar aponeuroses and palmar aponeuroses from patients with Dupuytren's disease were subjected to elastase or chondroitinase treatment. Young's modulus was derived from the linear portion of stress-strain graph. It showed the lowest value for the apparently normal palmar aponeuroses and the highest value for tendon samples. Elastase treatment caused an increase of extensibility and a reduction of Young's modulus of normal palmar aponeuroses and tendons, but not of contracture bands. In normal tendons, normal palmar aponeuroses and apparently normal palmar aponeuroses residual strain and hysteresis loop increased significantly as a linear function of the amount of digested elastin. In contrast these biomechanical parameters were not affected significantly in contracture bands. In normal and apparently normal areas incubation with chondroitinase ABC resulted in a significant increase of residual strain and, as opposed to elastase, a decrease of normalized hysteresis loop. In contracture bands, however, these biomechanical parameters remained unchanged. RELEVANCE: The increasing evidence of a correlation between morphological changes of palmar elastin and ground substance with the progress of Dupuytren's disease emphasizes the need to determine the relative importance of these connective tissue components for the pathogenesis of Dupuytren's disease.