Background/Purpose: To investigate the individual impact of synovial inflammation, subchondral bone erosion or cartilage damage on functional impairment in an animal model of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).

Methods: We analysed gait profiles in human tumor necrosis factor transgene (hTNFtg) animals, using the video-based Catwalk gait analysis system (from Noldus, Netherlands). In this system, mice run along an illuminated glass plate. A digital camera measures light emissions resulting from the contact of paws on the glass plate. We evaluated gait profiles at different time points of disease (6, 10, 15 week of age) in hTNFtg animals. Wildtype littermates served as controls. Bodyweight and clinical signs of arthritis including paw swelling and grip strength were also evaluated. To investigate whether gait changes are pain related, we treated hTNFtg animals with diclofenac (50 mg/kg, i.p.) at week 10 and week 15 after birth and analysed gait profiles before, as well as 1h and 3h after treatment. To analyse inflammatory joint destruction, we quantitatively assessed the extend of synovial inflammation, subchondral bone erosion and cartilage damage on hematoxylin & eosine (H&E), tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) and toluidine-blue stained paw sections. We performed correlation studies between gait parameters and the histopathological components.

Results: We identified several gait parameters among them weight bearing, stride length and contact area of the paw to be significantly decreased in hTNFtg animals compared to sex- and age-matched wildtype animals. Moreover, we found a marked reduction in maximum intensity, an indicator for weight bearing, in week 10 and 15 compared to week 6 old hTNFtg mice. Similar effects were seen in print width, print area, print length, max contact max intensity and max contact area at different stages of disease. Interestingly, analgesic treatment with diclofenac (50 mg/kg, i.p.), resulted in a better improvement of weight-bearing parameters in 10 week old hTNFtg mice than in 15 week old hTNFtg animals indicating an pain independent, irreversible functional impairment in progressed disease. To further investigate to which extend synovial inflammation, subchondral bone erosion or cartilage damage are responsible for the functional impairment of joints, we correlated these components with changes in different gait parameters.  We observed strong correlations of various gait parameters with the amount of cartilage damage, whereas subchondral bone erosions correlated to a lesser extend and synovial inflammation did not correlate at all.

Conclusion: Video-based Catwalk gait analysis is a useful tool for quantitative assessment of functional impairment in inflammatory, destructive arthritis. Joint destruction due to cartilage damage but not synovial inflammation per se is the most important component leading to functional impairment of hTNFtg mice.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/functional-impairment-in-an-animal-model-for-rheumatoid-arthritis-assessed-as-changes-in-gait-is-due-to-joint-destruction-but-not-synovial-inflammation-per-se/