Regenerative Therapies for Equine Degenerative Joint Disease: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Degenerative joint disease (DJD) is a major cause of reduced athletic function and retirement in equine performers. For this reason, regenerative therapies for DJD have gained increasing interest. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were isolated from a 6-year-old donor horse. MSCs were either used in their native state or after chondrogenic induction. In an initial study, 20 horses with naturally occurring DJD in the fetlock joint were divided in 4 groups and injected with the following: 1) PRP; 2) MSCs; 3) MSCs and PRP; or 4) chondrogenic induced MSCs and PRP. The horses were then evaluated by means of a clinical scoring system after 6 weeks (T1), 12 weeks (T2), 6 months (T3) and 12 months (T4) post injection. In a second study, 30 horses with the same medical background were randomly assigned to one of the two combination therapies and evaluated at T1. The protein expression profile of native MSCs was found to be negative for major histocompatibility (MHC) II and p63, low in MHC I and positive for Ki67, collagen type II (Col II) and Vimentin. Chondrogenic induction resulted in increased mRNA expression of aggrecan, Col II and cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) as well as in increased protein expression of p63 and glycosaminoglycan, but in decreased protein expression of Ki67. The combined use of PRP and MSCs significantly improved the functionality and sustainability of damaged joints from 6 weeks until 12 months after treatment, compared to PRP treatment alone. The highest short-term clinical evolution scores were obtained with chondrogenic induced MSCs and PRP. This study reports successful in vitro chondrogenic induction of equine MSCs. In vivo application of (induced) MSCs together with PRP in horses suffering from DJD in the fetlock joint resulted in a significant clinical improvement until 12 months after treatment.

Quality of Life of Elderly and Obese Animal Models with Severe Knee Osteoarthritis after a Single Injection of Mesenchymal Stem Cells

“…The ARomDe score monitors the quality of life via the measurement of three dimensions, including pain and function recovery and behavior. It is consistent with many previous studies, which generally evaluate the improvement of models and human with knee osteoarthritis via the achievement of pain relief [2,7,14,19,20,26,28,29] and function recovery [1,2,26,27] and emotional behavior [1,19,20,27].…”

“…MSC transplantation has been studied in various animal models and achieved the success, such as significantly improvement of joint function in equine [19], improving mobility of dog's OA joint [20], inducing reparation of knee cartilage [22]. Our work showed consistent results of improvement of OA joint and function recovery in animal models.…”

Evaluation of intra-articular injection of autologous platelet lysate (PL) in horses with osteoarthritis of the distal interphalangeal joint

“…Furthermore, the use of an autologous platelet concentrate in 20 athletic horses with refractory fetlock osteoarthritis gave better results; one year post-treatment the 80% of treated horses returned to work (Pichereau et al 2014). Similarly, in horses with naturally occurring degenerative joint disease in fetlock joint, the combined use of PRP and MSCs significantly improved the functionality and sustainability of damaged joints up to 12 months posttreatment, maybe due to enhanced MSC proliferation and chondrogenic differentiation induced by PRP (Broeckx et al 2014).…”

Regenerative Skin Wound Healing in Mammals: State-of-the-Art on Growth Factor and Stem Cell Based Treatments

“…The use of allogenic multipotent MSCs without adverse reactions has been described in both humans and horses [191,192,193,194,195,196,197]. Moreover, MSCs can inhibit the innate immune reaction by inhibiting dendritic cell maturation and reducing macrophage and T-cell activity [198,199,200,201,202].…”