Effect of Warm Acupuncture Combined with Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells Transplantation on Cartilage Tissue in Rabbit Knee Osteoarthritis

Figure 5

Effect of warm acupuncture combined with BMSCs on rabbit cartilage tissue of knee joint after KOA damage. (a) Representative images of apoptosis in vascular knee joint cartilage (×3000, bar = 10 μm). A: blank group; B: KOA group; C: warm acupuncture (WA) group; D: BMSCs group; E: WA combined with BMSCs group. The red arrows represent apoptotic body. (b) Representative fluorescence photo of TUNEL staining in cartilage tissue of knee joint. A: blank group; B: KOA group; C: warm acupuncture (WA) group; D: BMSCs group; E: WA combined with BMSCs group. (c) Quantitative analysis of the TUNEL-positive cells. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM (n = 10). versus the blank group, versus the KOA group, and versus the warm acupuncture combined with the BMSCs group.

(a)

(b)

(c)