Long immobilization periods lead to bone and properties loss, and its recovery depends on many factors. Besides that, immobilization can cause ulcerations in the articular cartilage tissue due to alterations, such as loss of proteoglycans and total cartilage mass and volume. The aim of this study was to verify histological alterations of the periarticular bone tissue and articular cartilage caused by immobilization as well as remobilization of hinder limbs of Wistar rats. Twelve Wistar rats were divided in two groups: GI - (n=6): 15 days with the left hinder limb immobilized at plantiflexion, with the right limb being the control; GR - (n=6): used a 15 day-period of free remobilization in the cage, associated with 3 daily stretching bouts of the left soleus muscle for 30 seconds. The measures of the cortical bone thickness, diameter of the medular channel and number of condrocites were evaluated; in the cartilage tissue, the cartilage mean thickness and the number of condrocites were measured. The results showed that for GI there were no significant alterations in the bone thickness (p=0.1156), nor in the medular channel diameter (p=0.5698), but there was significant decrease of the osteocytes compared with the counter-lateral side (p=0.0005); in GR decrease in the number of osteocytes (p=0.0001) was also observed, but the differences in thickness (p=0.1343) and medular channel diameter (p=0.6456) remained non-significant. There were no significant differences for the articular cartilage data for the samples, neither in the cartilage thickness for GI (p=0.6640) and GR (p=0.1633); concerning the number of condrocites in GI (p=0.9429) and GR (p=0.1634). It is concluded hence that two weeks of immobilization and remobilization produced only significant decrease in the number of osteocytes in the immobilized rats and continued to decrease even in the remobilized animals.
muscular stretch; articular stress; bone metabolism
