Tensile fatigue of human articular cartilage

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Abstract

The fatigue properties of human articular cartilage were studied by subjecting isolated specimens of cartilage, cut from the superficial layer of more than 30 post-mortem human femoral heads, to repeated applications of tensile stress.

A wide variation in fatigue resistance was found between the cartilage from different femoral heads, although all the cartilage appeared to be normal on the basis of Indian ink examination and proteoglycan analysis.

The variation in fatigue resistance correlated poorly with collagen and proteoglycan content but significantly with age.

It was concluded that the fatigue properties of human articular cartilage decrease with age to such an extent that fatigue failure of the material could occur in life.

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