Articular cartilage
Articular cartilage is the smooth, slippery tissue that covers the ends of bones in moving joints, letting them glide and spreading load with low friction. It has no blood vessels, lymphatics or nerves.
Also called joint cartilage, hyaline cartilage.
It is a specialised connective tissue of the freely moving joints (Sophia Fox 2009). It is mostly water, from about 80% near the surface to 65% in the deep zone, held in a network of collagen fibres and proteoglycans; the resistance to water flowing through that network, and the pressure of the water held in it, help the tissue carry load (Sophia Fox 2009).
Its cells, the chondrocytes, make up only about 2% of its volume, and the tissue has a limited capacity to heal itself, which is why reviewers call its preservation paramount to joint health (Sophia Fox 2009).
In rats, cartilage held more glutathione than the meniscus or the knee's fat pad, but its glutathione was also more prone to oxidation with age (Zhu 2020).
Sources
- Sophia Fox AJ, Bedi A, Rodeo SA. The basic science of articular cartilage: structure, composition, and function. Sports Health 2009.
- Zhu S, Makosa D, Miller B et al. Glutathione as a mediator of cartilage oxidative stress resistance and resilience during aging and osteoarthritis. Connect Tissue Res 2020.
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