ANALYSIS OF WEAR PARTICLE OF PVA HYDROGEL AND EFFECT OF THE PARTICLE ON IMMUNE RESPONSE OF MACROPHAGE

It is reported that more than 10 million Japanese suffer from arthrosis. To cure these cartilage defects, total joint replacements, which are the most popular treatment methods for severe disease situation, have been operated as about two hundred thousand cases a year in Japan. Although the implants made of either ceramics, metals or plastics have high wear resistance quality, it becomes apparent that the endurance life of the artificial joints in considerable cases is limited by aseptic loosening to between 10–15 years. Here we focused on a poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogel as an artificial cartilage tissue to make an improvement of friction surface of the artificial joints. In this paper, we observed morphology of wear particles and assessed immune responses of wear particles from the hydrogel for confirming the validity of the gel as a biotribological material.We prepared 20 w/w% of PVA hydrogel by repeated freezing-thawing method. The number of the freezing-thawing cycles was five times. Polymerizati...