Abstract
Murine collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) has become a valuable animal model for elucidating pathogenic mechanisms and evaluating therapeutic effects for rheumatoid arthritis. Recent advances in digital imaging and computer technology have enabled gait analysis to develop into a powerful tool for objectively detecting functional deficits in human and animal models. The present study explored the use of non-invasive video-capture gait analysis in the evaluation of a murine CIA model. CIA was induced in 45 female DBA/1LacJ mice (8 to 10 weeks old) by immunization with lyophilized bovine articular type II collagen. Gait parameters were determined by ventral plane videography and were correlated to traditional arthritis clinical scores. Our results showed that increases in clinical scores that measure the severity of CIA corresponded to changes in multiple gait parameters that reflect both morphologic (increases in paw area) and functional (increase in stride frequency, decrease in stride length, hind-limb paw placement angle, as well as stride, stance, and braking times) deficits. Our work indicated that the non-invasive video-capture device may be used as a simple and objective data acquisition system for quantifying gait disturbances in CIA mice for the investigation of mechanisms and the evaluation of therapeutic agents.
Highlights
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease characterized by chronic inflammation in the limbs and joints, cyclic progressive cartilage and bone destruction, and severe disability [1]
The availability of transgenic or gene-deficient mice further enhances the power of the Collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) mouse model for the investigation of the molecular mechanism of the disease [4]
The most commonly used method for assessing the severity of CIA is a semi-quantitative clinical scoring system based on the degree of inflammatory responses in the paws and joints, which is subjectively determined by the investigator [5,6,7,8,9,10]
Summary
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease characterized by chronic inflammation in the limbs and joints, cyclic progressive cartilage and bone destruction, and severe disability [1]. The availability of transgenic or gene-deficient mice further enhances the power of the CIA mouse model for the investigation of the molecular mechanism of the disease [4]. The most commonly used method for assessing the severity of CIA is a semi-quantitative clinical scoring system based on the degree of inflammatory responses in the paws and joints, which is subjectively determined by the investigator [5,6,7,8,9,10]. No established method is available to objectively evaluate the functional abnormality in the mouse CIA model. The aim of this study was to evaluate the novel 'objective' gait analysis system in relation to the traditional 'subjective' clinical scoring system in a mouse model of CIA
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