Discharge characteristics of fine medial articular afferents at rest and during passive movements of inflamed knee joints.

After induction of an experimental knee joint inflammation, the activity of single Group III and IV afferent units in the medial articular nerve of the cat was recorded at rest and during passive movements. The properties of these units were compared to those sampled from normal knee joints. The proportion of units displaying resting discharges was higher in the inflamed group. The frequency of discharges was also higher. The receptive fields were larger than those in the control units. Passive movements in the normal working range of the joint activated many more units in the inflamed joint than in the control sample. We conclude that joint inflammation sensitizes articular nociceptors to be active not only at rest, but also during normally innocuous joint movements.