Role of Synovial Fluid Constituents on Tribological Behavior of Synovial Joints - Application for Developing Novel Therapeutic Substitutes

Abstract

Joint diseases represent a major health problem because they evolve towards the wear of cartilage for which no treatment is really effective. The difficulties in identifying the causes of these diseases are related to the biochemical and structural complexity of synovial fluid that allow cartilage lubrication. Thereby, recent studies show that synovial fluid contains micro-vesicles filled with a glycoprotein gel (hyaluronic acid and protein) surrounded by stacks of lipid bilayers which gives it excellent lubricating properties [1]. On the other side, this stable structure in vivo, becomes unstable in the ex vivo conditions. In this context, the study aims to tests the lubricating properties of synovial fluid constituents in order to identify their role on the tribological behavior of synovial joints and to develop a biomimetic synovial fluid using self-assembly of polyelectrolytes in order to stabilize the ex vivo structure for the potential therapeutic synovial fluid substitutes.Our results show that the new synthetized polysaccharides influence the friction coefficient, the stability and the wear of lipids bilayers, providing lubricating properties superior to synovial fluid biological constituents. In addition, their capacity to be structured in micro-spheres and included in lipid micro-vesicles indicates them as good biomimetic lubricants. This will allow a longer stability of synovial fluid substitutes in ex-vivo conditions in order to achieve the best lubricating properties and to improve the joint diseases treatment.