Treatment with calcitonin prevents the net loss of collagen, hyaluronan and proteoglycan aggregates from cartilage in the early stages of canine experimental osteoarthritis

Abstract

Because CT delivered as a nasal spray markedly reduced the severity of most OA changes, both at the histological and biochemical level, this form of therapy may have benefits for humans who have recently experienced a traumatic knee injury, and as well as for dogs who spontaneously rupture their ACL.

An OA phenotype may obtain major benefit from bone-acting agents

“…Further studies carried out in the canine Pond-Nuki model demonstrated that tiludronate exerts beneficial effects on gait disability and joint symptoms by improving some OA structural changes and reducing the synthesis of catabolic and inflammatory mediators [27]. Similar findings have been reported for calcitonin and estrogen use in different OA experimental models [16,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. Calcitonin prevented subchondral bone resorption and trabecular thinning associated to reduced cartilage degradation in a canine ACLT-induced OA model [28,29].…”

“…Remarkably, in a 3-year study examining the effect of estrogen replacement therapy on OA development in ovariectomized cynomolgus monkeys, fewer cartilage lesions and lower subchondral bone turnover indices were seen in the estrogen group compared with the control group [36,37]. Both estrogen therapy and calcitonin have been demonstrated also to have positive direct effects on articular cartilage [30,34,36,39].…”

Targeting subchondral bone for treating osteoarthritis: what is the evidence?

“…The investigators suggested that calcitonin worked in both prophylactic and therapeutic stages of OA. Studies in the ACL dog model [144,145] also showed that subcutaneous injections of calcitonin under therapeutic conditions reduced the progression of OA cartilage and subchondral bone changes as well as the level of serum markers of bone resorption up to 4 months after the surgery. A small phase II trial assessing the efficacy of oral salmon calcitonin in knee OA was recently published [146].…”

Evaluation of cartilage damage by measuring collagen degradation products in joint extracts in a traumatic model of osteoarthritis

“…rabbits (Chang et al 1997, Amiel et al 2003, dogs (Smith et al 2002, El Hajjaji et al 2004, and more recently in the rat (Stoop et al 2001, Hayami et al 2004). In this model, the first changes include loss of superficial chondrocytes and a slight fibrillation of the articular cartilage with loss of proteoglycans, followed by cartilage erosion and collagen degradation at a later time point (Stoop et al 2001).…”