Our results suggest an association between reported fatigue and experiencing difficulties with physical and cognitive functions in construction workers.

SUMMARY Objective In growth plate chondrocytes, loss of Dicer, a microRNA (miRNA)-processing enzyme, causes defects in proliferation and differentiation, leading to a lethal skeletal dysplasia. However roles of miRNAs in articular chondrocytes have not been defined in vivo. To investigate the role of miRNAs in articular chondrocytes and to explore the possibility of generating a novel mouse osteoarthritis (OA) model caused by intrinsic cellular dysfunction, we ablated Drosha, another essential enzyme for miRNA biogenesis, exclusively in articular chondrocytes of postnatal mice. Design First, to confirm that the essential role of miRNAs in skeletal development, we ablated the miRNA biogenesis pathway by deleting Drosha or DGCR8 in growth plate chondrocytes. Next, to investigate the role of miRNAs in articular cartilage, we deleted Drosha using Prg4-CreERT transgenic mice expressing a tamoxifen-activated Cre recombinase (CreERT) exclusively in articular chondrocytes. Tamoxifen was injected at postnatal days, 7, 14, 21, and 28 to ablate Drosha. Results Deletion of Drosha or DGCR8 in growth plate chondrocytes caused a lethal skeletal defect similar to that of Dicer deletion, confirming the essential role of miRNAs in normal skeletogenesis. Early postnatal Drosha deletion in articular chondrocytes significantly increased cell death and decreased Safranin-O staining. Mild OA-like changes, including surface erosion and cleft formation, were found in male mice at 6 months of age; however such changes in females were not observed even at 9 months of age. Conclusions Early postnatal Drosha deficiency induces articular chondrocyte death and can cause a mild OA-like pathology.

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Mice are commonly used to study the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) and to model human TMJ disease. However, evaluating TMJ pathology in mice using standard histologic methods is time consuming, labor intensive, and dependent upon investigators’ expertise at consistently orienting and sectioning across tiny specimens. We describe a method that uses confocal microscopy to rapidly and reliably assess indicators of mandibular condyle cartilage pathology in mice. We demonstrate the utility of this method for detecting abnormalities in chondrocyte distribution in mice lacking lubricin (Prg4), the major boundary lubricant of articular cartilage. We further show that the method can provide information about recombination sites and efficiency in mandibular cartilage for Cre-driver strains. Because specimen preparation and data acquisition with confocal microscopy are simple and fast, the method can serve as a primary screening tool for TMJ pathology, before proceeding to complicated, time consuming, secondary analyses.