Fig. 1

Study setup of human osteochondral explants receiving 65% MS. A Osteochondral explants were punched from preserved areas of knee joints and the medium is refreshed on indicated days (T). B Damage in our mechanical stress model was confirmed by degradation of sGAG in cartilage by toluidine blue staining (histology of two independent donors) and measuring C sGAG release in conditioned media on day 13 (n_control = 31 versus n_65%MS = 28). The average ± 95% CI are presented with each dot representing a sample. To adjust for donor variation, P-values were estimated by performing logistic generalized estimation equations, with sGAG concentration as dependent variable and treatment as covariate: sGAG concentration ∼ Treatment + (1|Donor). **P ≤ 0.01. Legend: 65%MS 65% mechanical stress, DMMB dimethylmethylene blue, sGAG sulfated glycosaminoglycans