Animal models of forced running are used to study overuse tendinopathy, a common health problem for which clear evidence for effective and accessible treatments is still lacking. In these models, pain evaluation is necessary to better understand the disease, help design and evaluate therapies, and ensure humane treatment of the animals. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to evaluate pain and pathologic findings in an animal model of moderate Achilles tendinopathy induced by treadmill running. Air puffs, instead of electrical shocks, were used to stimulate running so that pain associated with stimulation would be avoided. Pressure pain sensitivity was evaluated in vivo using a new instrumented plier, whereas spinal cord peptides were analyzed ex vivo with high‐performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Tendon histologic slides were semiquantitatively evaluated, using the Bonar score technique and biomechanical properties, using the traction test. After 8 weeks of treadmill running (2 weeks for adaptation and 6 weeks for the lesion protocol), the protocol was stopped because the air puffs became ineffective to stimulate running. We, nevertheless, observed some histologic changes characteristic of overuse tendinopathy as well as decreased mechanical properties, increased Substance P and dynorphin A peptides but without pressure pain sensitivity. These results suggest that air‐puffs stimulation is sufficient to induce an early stage tendinopathy to study new therapeutic drugs without inducing unnecessary pain. They also indicate that pain‐associated peptides could be related with movement evoked pain and with the sharp breakdown of the running performance.
Background
Stress deprivation (SD) has frequently been used as a model to study tendinopathy. Most of these studies have investigated either short-term (early tendinopathy) or long-term SD (advanced tendinopathy), while the transient mid-term SD has been given less attention. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to characterize mid-term SD.
Methods
To this end, live, healthy rat tail tendons (RTTs) were harvested and cultured without mechanical stress and then were divided into five groups based on their culture time (fresh, 2-day SD, 4-day SD, 6-day SD, and 10-day SD). For each group, the tendons were subjected to traction testing and pathohistology, immunohistochemistry, and viability assays.
Results
Our results showed that 4 days of SD resulted in moderate pathological changes in RTTs. These changes included increases in the space area between fibers, cell density, and fiber tortuosity as well as a decrease in collagen density and elongation of cell nuclei. No changes in the stress at failure of tendons were observed at this time point.
Conclusions
This simple ex vivo model is expected to be useful for studying the progression of tendinopathy as well as for testing potential mechanobiological or pharmacological therapy strategies to stop or reverse the progression of the pathology.
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