Statement on animal welfare
In vivo experimental procedures followed the Swiss animal welfare regulations. The experimental protocols were approved by the Cantonal Veterinary Office of the City of Basel, Switzerland. The study was performed under the license number BS-1438, approved by the Cantonal Veterinary Office of the City of Basel. Authors complied with the ARRIVE guidelines for animal experimentation.
Animals
Female Lewis/OrlRj rats (n=25) from Janvier Laboratories (Le Genest-Saint-Isle, France), 150-180 g or eight weeks of age at the beginning of the study, were used. Rats were housed under standard conditions (12-hour light/dark cycle), with standard chow and water provided ad libitum. Upon arrival, rats were allowed two weeks of acclimatization before beginning the experiments.
Monosodium urate (MSU) crystals
MSU crystals were prepared according to the method originally described by Seegmiller et al12.
Induction of gouty arthritis
Twenty five rats were used. On day 0, the right knee received 50 µl of a mixture containing 40 mg/ml MSU crystals and 0.1 µg/ml LPS from E. coli (0111:B4, Sigma L2630) in saline, while the left knee received 50 µl of saline. The intra-articular injections of MSU/LPS into the right and saline into the left knee were then repeated every two weeks (namely on days 0, 14, 28, 42 and 56). Saline was administered into the left knee to verify whether repeated intra-articular injection of fluid might elicit an inflammatory response in the knee joint. Rats were anesthetized with 3.5% isoflurane (Abbott, Cham, Switzerland)/air for each intra-articular injection. At each of the time points days 14, 28, 42, 56 and 70 five animals were culled for post-mortem analyses. The sacrificed rats had received the last MSU/LPS dose 14 days before being euthanized.
Exclusion criterion
A weight loss of more than 20% would lead to an exclusion and early euthanasia of an animal. However, no rat needed to be excluded from the study.
Knee swelling
Knee diameters were measured using calipers immediately before and again on days 1, 2, 3 and 7 after each intra-articular injection. Right and left knee diameters were determined in the medial-lateral direction, with the caliper positioned perpendicularly to the leg axis. Knee swelling was defined as the ratio between the knee diameter at a given time point and the mean knee diameter at baseline, before any injection.
Nociceptive test
Hind-paw sensitivity was evaluated by measuring the mechanical withdrawal threshold using a handheld electronic von Frey unit (Cat # 38450, Ugo Basile, Gemonio, Italy). An animal was placed in clear boxes on an elevated mesh screen (models BIO-STD EVF and BIO-PVF, Bioseb, Vitrolles, France), and allowed to habituate for 15 min before testing. A filament was applied to the plantar surface of each hind paw. The force was increased by increments of 0.1 g force units from zero until paw withdrawal. A transducer comprising a digital timer automatically recorded the force eliciting paw withdrawal and the corresponding response latency to the nearest 0.1 s. The filament was applied five times per paw, separated by a 5-min interval to prevent sensitization, and the threshold was defined as an average of the five withdrawals observed within the trials.
Imaging
During acquisitions animals were anesthetized with isoflurane 1.5-2% in air, administered via a nose cone.
MRI. Performed with a Pharmascan 7T scanner (Bruker, Etlingen, Germany). A T2-weighted spin-echo sequence with the following parameters was applied: 16 echoes spaced by 11 ms, echo time (TE) from 11 to 176 ms, repetition time 2022 ms, pixel size 0.078x0.078 mm, slice thickness 0.48 mm, 8 slices, without and with fat suppression. A volume resonator (Model 1P-T11070V3, Bruker) with 72 mm inner diameter was used for transmission. A two-channel phased array receive-only mouse head surface coil (Model 1P-T11204V3, Bruker) was used for signal reception.
Relaxation time T2 for cartilage, infrapatellar pad and muscle was determined by fitting with GraphPad Prism (version 8.1.2, GraphPad Software, San Diego, CA) the corresponding signals from regions-of-interest (ROIs) placed in these anatomical areas as function of TE. Volumes of effusion were determined by segmenting the corresponding signals by their intensity using a region grower algorithm available at the scanner software.
Micro-CT. Measurements were performed using a vivaCT-40 micro-CT system (Scanco Medical, Brüttisellen, Switzerland). The scan parameters were: voxel size 17.5x17.5x17.5 μm, 426 slices, integration time 130 ms, high resolution, 55 E(kVp), 145 μA, 8W mode, cone beam continuous rotation.
Ex vivo analyses
Two weeks after one or more MSU/LPS injections, rats were euthanized, and synovial fluid collected from the right and left knees. Synovial fluid supernatant stored at -20°C until further analysis. The skin was removed and knees were excised for histology.
Multiplex ELISA
Synovial fluid samples were analyzed using a multiplex enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with rat specific reagents, following the manufacturer’s protocols (Bio-Rad Laboratories, Hercules, CA). The dedicated Bio-Plex Manager™ software running on a Bioplex 200 System array reader (Bio-Rad) was used to determine individual concentrations. Because of the small amount of synovial fluid drawn from each animal, data from different time points during the course of the study were pooled to allow statistical comparisons between saline- and MSU/LPS-injected joints.
Histology
Knee joints were fixed in 10% neutral buffered formalin for three days and then placed in a decalcification solution (ImmunoCal Cat # 1440, Decal Chemical Corp, Suffern, NY) for 5 days. On the fourth day, knees were trimmed along the sagittal axis approximately in the middle of the joint and decalcified to completion. After sample dehydration and paraffin embedding, 5-µm-thick sections were cut and stained: hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) for general observation, and proteoglycan-containing cartilage identified by Safranin O/Fast green using a procedure adapted from Lu et al13. Joint pathology was scored according to the Mankin system14, considering cartilage surface integrity (0-6), proteoglycan loss (0-4), chondrocyte morphology (0-3), fibrovascular replacement of subchondral marrow fat spaces (0-1), synovitis (0-3) and tidemark breaching (0-1). Macrophages and osteoclasts were detected with an anti-CD68 antibody (MCA341R, Serotec, Puchheim, Germany) applied on paraffin sections as described by Damoiseaux et al15.
Statistics
Multiplex assay data from synovial fluid samples were analyzed using Student’s t-tests (Origin 2021, OriginLab Corporation, Northampton, MA, USA). Paw withdrawal threshold and MRI data were analyzed using ANOVA with random effects (Systat version 13; Systat Software Inc., San Jose, California, USA) to take into account the longitudinal structure of the data. A value of p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.