Biomechanical properties of transplanted xenogenic meniscal tissue

The clinical repair approaches to meniscal lesions include total or subtotal meniscectomy, transplantation, and tissue engineering. The investigations of D Jiang, etal, found that the transplanted xenogenic meniscal tissues, which were treated by 60Co irradiation and deep freezing, maybe one of the effective approaches. In this paper, we evaluated the biomechanical properties of the transplanted xenogenic meniscal tissues at postoperative 1 year. In vitro tensile and compressive tests are performed to compare the properties of tensile elasticity, tensile strength, and compressive elasticcity, between three groups: RAB group of normal rabbit meniscus tissue, Allo group of transplanted allograft meniscal tissue, and Xeno group of transplanted xenogenic meniscal tissue. The meniscus of the Xeno group showed similar tension and compression modulus as the native rabbit meniscus with no significant difference (p>0.05), and the tension strength of both the Xeno group and the Allo group were less than that of the native rabbit meniscus (0.05<p<0.1). No significant difference was found between the Xeno group and the Allo group with regard to each biomechanical parameter (p>0.05). These base studies will be helpful in future transplantation and tissue engineering efforts.