Protective effects of total fraction of avocado/soybean unsaponifiables on the structural changes in experimental dog osteoarthritis: inhibition of nitric oxide synthase and matrix metalloproteinase-13

Table 1 Histological score of femoral condyles and tibial plateaus of placebo and ASU-treated dogs

	Treatment group	Structure (0 to 30)^a	Tangential (0 to 6)^a	Transitional (0 to 30)^a	Safranin-O staining (0 to 12)^a	Pannus (0 to 9)^a	Total (0 to 87)^a
Femoral condyles	Placebo	20.50 ± 0.92	5.75 ± 0.19	15.63 ± 0.70	4.69 ± 0.33	0.88 ± 0.24	47.55 ± 1.74
	ASU (10 mg/kg)	11.44 ± 0.90 (P < 0.0001)	3.81 ± 0.25 (P < 0.0001)	12.88 ± 0.42 (P = 0.006)	3.69 ± 0.24 (P = 0.03)	0.19 ± 0.10 (P = 0.004)	32.31 ± 1.64 (P < 0.0001)
Tibial plateaus	Placebo	20.69 ± 0.64	5.75 ± 0.14	16.88 ± 0.79	4.75 ± 0.40	1.75 ± 0.34	49.81 ± 1.86
	ASU (10 mg/kg)	13.25 ± 1.52 (P < 0.0001)	4.19 ± 0.28 (P = 0.0002)	13.06 ± 0.55 (P = 0.001)	4.25 ± 0.31	1.62 ± 0.36	36.38 ± 2.07 (P = 0.0002)

The score was determined as described in the Materials and methods section. The final score corresponds to the sum of the scores obtained for the three subregions. Data are expressed as mean ± standard error of the mean and were analyzed using Mann-Whitney two-tailed U-test. Comparison was performed with the autologous placebo and P = 0.05 is considered statistically significant. ^aThe values given in parentheses indicates the range for each measure. ASU, avocado/soybean unsaponifiables.

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