Age-Related Differences in Anterior Cruciate Ligament Remnant Vascular-Derived Cells

Abstract

During remnant-preserving or remnant-transplanted ACL reconstruction, surgeons should consider the patient's age when predicting the healing potential.

Age-Dependent Healing Potential of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Remnant-Derived Cells

“…In our study, CD34-positive vascular stem cells in the ACL-derived cells of young patients may have enhanced angiogenesis and osteogenesis, leading to early bone-tendon healing in the younger group. All things considered, the results of the previous study 35 that the rate of CD34-positive cells in ACL-derived cells from young patients was relatively high explain the results of the present study.…”

“…The purpose of this study was to provide surgeons with new knowledge regarding ACL reconstruction; we hoped to build on the results of a previous study demonstrating that ACL remnants of adolescent patients had more CD34-positive cells compared with ACL remnants of older patients and that these CD34-positive cells had a higher potential for proliferation and multilineage differentiation in vitro. 35 This is the first report in a rat ACL reconstruction model to demonstrate a difference between the healing potential of ACL-derived cells from young patients and older patients. The age-dependent decline in cell healing potential demonstrated in this animal study is relevant to clinical settings, and surgeons should consider the patient's age in the use of ruptured ACL remnant tissue to accelerate bone-tendon healing in ACL reconstruction.…”

“…The rest of the grafts, and all native ACLs, failed at midsubstance. Failure load of tensile test demonstrated that ultimate load to failure was significantly higher in the younger group compared with the other experimental groups; however, native rat ACLs showed significantly higher ultimate load to failure compared with all of the experimental groups (native ACLs, 35 Figure 5). There was no statistically significant difference in the linear stiffness among the 3 experimental groups.…”

Mesenchymal Stem Cells Isolated from the Anterior Cruciate Ligament: Characterization and Comparison of Cells from Young and Old Donors

“…This study supports our findings that ACL-MSCs from young and old donors have similar potentials for multilineage differentiation, but differences in gene expression could be detected, which might contribute to a different cytoskeleton and ECM17). In contrast to Lee et al17) and our presented study, Uefuji et al19) found not only a higher proportion of MSCs but also a higher potential for proliferation and multilineage differentiation of MSCs from young donors than MSCs from older donors in vitro . These findings might be important for native tissue healing potential in vivo , but as we and others showed, MSCs from older donors probably can be used for the development of regenerative therapies as MSCs from younger donors17).…”

“…However, existing studies assessing tendon-derived MSCs, or BMSCs from healthy patients and patients with osteoarthritis did not document age-dependent differences in CFU-f frequencies either20,21). Other studies showed slight age-dependent differences in CFU-f formation for BMSCs isolated from young and old donors, but none of them was statistically significant19,22). Likewise, no significant age-dependent difference in the cumulative population doublings was observed, which is in accordance with some published characterizations of BMSCs23,24).…”