Effects of hormones and drugs on cartilage repair.

When cartilage is attacked, either by an excess of charges or by biochemical agents, its morphological and functional impairment is associated with a local homeostatic reaction; this includes a proliferative response (assessed by 3H-thymidine incorporation) and a stimulation of proteoglycan and type II collagen (II coll) synthesis. This homeostatic reaction may be studied in vitro using tridimensional culture of human chondrocytes. Cartilage clusters are formed after 4 days' culture and chondrocytes multiply for the first 15 days of culture. Furthermore, human cartilage proteoglycans and II coll, assayed by specific radioimmunoassays, are released into the culture medium and constitute the new matrix of the clusters. Moreover, it appears that these human chondrocytes are targets for several hormones capable of stimulating a proliferative response without affecting proteoglycan and II coll synthesis.