ABSTRACT

We aimed to scan the literature-including growth factors seeded within the scaffold as the signalling- in order to find out high-quality evidence of combination treatments of chondrocytes, produced from chondrocyte tissue cultures, so as to discuss and determine the homogeneity/heterogeneity rates.

Without language restriction in this paper, the electronic databases; The Cochrane Collaboration The Cochrane, The Cochrane Library (Issue 2 of 12, Feb. 2011), Ovid MEDLINE (1950 to 5th March Week 1 2011), ProQuest, US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health (NLM) and PubMed dating from May 1970 to 5th March 2011, were searched for comparative experimental studies using the terms: “OR”, “AND”. On-line literature searches were conducted using the key words “cartilage”, “controlled release”, “cross linking”, “growth factor” and “hydrogel”, in combinations. Eligible trials were entered into Review Manager software. Heterogeneity was considered significant for comparisons with a P-value of less than 0.05.

The primary search generated 957829 potentially relevant articles. Four experimental studies, which were conducted in various countries, that met our criterias and measure the effectiveness of cartilage degeneration while the biodegradation duration is lengthened by cross linkers and embedding GFs into the hydrogel, were included to this review. Heterogeneity test showed P=0.75, so the null hypothesis that all the studies were homogeneous was not rejected.

There is insufficient evidence to make conclusions about the treatment of cartilage damage by means of hydrogel, in which GFs are embedded so as to form a controlled drug delivery system, and of which cross linkers are added to extend the peroid of biodegradation. However, sound conclusions can only be acquired by stringently and scientifically designed, large, multicentre and clinical future trials.