DSC Study of Collagen in Disc Disease

S Skrzyński,A Marciniak,A Sionkowska

doi:10.1155/2009/819635

S Skrzyński, A Marciniak + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1155/2009/819635

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Abstract

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has been used to estimate the effect of disc disease on the collagen helix-coil transition and morphology for tissue extracted from patients during surgical operation. Forty discs were obtained from patients with degenerative disc disease undergoing surgery for low back pain. The patients were in the age between 20 and 70 years old. The specimens were kept wet during DSC experiment. The data allow the comparison between thermal stability of collagen tissue from healthy patients and from patients suffering from disc disease. In the paper the comparison between thermal helix-coil transition for collagen fibers from patients suffering from disc disease and collagen fibers from healthy organisms has been discussed. The heating rate has an influence on the position on denaturation temperatures of collagen in disc tissues. Higher helix-coil transition temperature of collagen in degenerated disc suggests that additional intermolecular cross linking of collagen fibers occurs. Denaturation temperatures of collagen in degenerated male disc possess smaller values than in female ones. Disc disease induces changes in collagen structure and leads to formation of additional crosslinks between collagen fibers.

Highlights

Collagen is the main protein of connective tissue
Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) curves for collagen in healthy disc and collagen in disc degenerated by discopathy are presented in Figures 1 and 2
As can be seen the heating rate has an influence on the position of the peak of denaturation temperatures of collagen in disc tissues

Summary

Introduction

Collagen is the main protein of connective tissue. It has great tensile strength, and is the main component of ligaments and tendons. It was demonstrated in the literature that DSC is an applicable method for the demonstration of thermal consequences of local as well as global conformational changes in the structure of the human intervertebral discs It comes from the inherent nature of this method that we cannot assign any thermal event to any molecular process directly, but the results suggest that definitive differences exist between the stages of disc degeneration in calorimetric measurements going on either on a local or global level [13]. The stability of the collagenous components and the mechanical integrity of connective tissues such as the disc are dependent on the degree and type of cross-links between the collagen molecules. This paper records an experiment that investigates calorimetrically the effect of disc disease on the collagen helix-coil transition for tissue extracted from patients during surgical operation. The data allow the comparison between thermal stability of collagen tissue from healthy patients and from patients suffering from disc disease

Materials and Methods

Results and Discussion

Conclusions