effect of training, hyaluronic acid, and mesenchymal stem cell therapies on osteocalcin gene expression in cartilage tissue of rats with knee osteoarthritis

Background: osteoarthritis (oa) is one of the most common progressive diseases in the joints. a few studies have evaluated the effect of combined endurance training (et), hyaluronic acid (ha), and mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) on bone mass. objectives: the present study aimed to examine the effect of et, ha, and mscs on osteocalcin (oc) gene expression in cartilage tissues of rats with knee oa. methods: in this experimental study, 40 rats with oa were divided into eight groups of five rats, including (1) control, (2) mscs, (3) ha, (4) et, (5) ha + mscs, (6) et + ha, (7) et + mscs, and (8) et + mscs + ha. to investigate the effects of oa on oc, five rats were assigned to the healthy group. during eight weeks, the et groups ran on a treadmill three sessions per week (30 - 50 min at a speed of 16 m/min), the msc groups received mscs (1 × 10^6 cells/kg) intra-articularly, and the ha groups were treated with a 10 mg/ml intra-articular therapeutic dose of ha. the oc gene expression levels were measured by the real-time pcr method. the shapiro-wilk and one-way anova with tukey’s post hoc tests were used to analyze the data (p ≤ 0.05). results: osteoarthritis significantly decreased oc (p ≤ 0.05); nevertheless, et + ha + mscs, ha + mscs, et + ha, and et + mscs significantly increased oc (p ≤ 0.05). also, oc was significantly higher in the et + ha + mscs group than in either of et, ha, or msc groups (p ≤ 0.05). conclusions: it seems that a combination of et, ha, and mscs has more favorable effects than each one alone on the improvement of oc in cartilage tissues of rats with knee oa.