Unweighting accelerates tidemark advancement in articular cartilage at the knee joint of rats.

Morphologic development of articular cartilage is influenced by biologic adaptation to functional demands. It has been theorized that intermittent stresses generated by load bearing and motion determine cartilage thickness by controlling advancement of the subchondral mineralization front. The mineralization front is comprised of two interfaces, the tidemark and chondroosseus junction, each of which advances through a different biologic process. This study was designed to evaluate the influence of one month of hind limb unweighting, with and without concurrent restriction of joint motion, on mineral apposition at the tidemark and vascular invasion at the chondroosseus junction in the knee joints of young adult rats. In mobile joints, hind limb unweighting induced a 2-fold increase in the tidemark mineral apposition rate (p = 0.0001) at the primary weight bearing region, resulting in a thinning of the uncalcified cartilage layer and a concurrent thickening of the calcified layer. Cast immobilization negated the effect of unweighting at the tidemark while it activated subchondral vascular encroachment into the calcified cartilage (p = 0.001). These findings suggest that cartilage thinning associated with the elimination of weight bearing is mediated through a different biological mechanism than cartilage loss associated with restriction of joint motion.