The effects of loaded swimming exercise on articular cartilage and serum SOD and MDA in osteoarthritic knees / 中华物理医学与康复杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To observe the effects of loaded swimming exercise on articular cartilage and the serum superoxide dismutase (SOD) and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels in knees modelling osteoarthritis in rats.Also to explore how loaded swimming might be useful in treating knee osteoarthritis (KOA) in clinical practice.Methods Fifty male Wistar rats were divided randomly into a normal group (20 rats) and a model group (30 rats).A model of knee osteoarthritis was created in the rats of the model group by papain injection.Ten rats from the normal group and 10 from the model group were sacrificed for① gross and optical microscopic observations of pathological changes in their knee articular cartilage; ② quantifying the expression of MMP-13 in the knee articular cartilage using immunohistochemistry; ③ determining serum SOD and MDA content using enzyme-linked immunosorbet assays.The remaining 20 rats of the model group were divided into a loaded swimming group (10 rats) and a control group (10 rats).There were no extra interventions involving the rats in the normal and control groups.The rats in the loaded swimming group took loaded swimming exercise for 6 weeks.After that,the same 3 indicators were again surveyed in all groups.Results The scores of pathological changes and the expression of MMP-13 in knee articular cartilage decreased significantly more in the loaded swimming group than in the control group.Serum SOD content also increased significantly more.Conclusions Loaded swimming exercise can delay articular cartilage damage and increase the serum SOD content of osteoarthritic knees,at least in rats.