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[Preprint]. 2023 Apr 21:rs.3.rs-2753443. [Version 1] doi: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-2753443/v1

Figure 3. Walking velocity and spatiotemporal gait pattern analysis before and after intra-articular injection of IDO-Gal3 or saline in MCLT+MMT operated knees.

Figure 3

Prior to treatment (weeks 3–7), saline and IDO-Gal3 treated rats used similar walking velocities (p≥0.89, Fig. 3A). However, following treatment, rats treated with IDO-Gal3 used faster walking velocities than saline controls on week 10 and week 11 (p<0.001, p=0.033, respectively). Balanced gaits are defined as stance time being equal on the left and right limb, or a difference of stance time between limbs being near zero. Temporally symmetric gaits have foot strike sequences that are equally spaced in time, where a right foot strike occurs halfway between two left foot strikes (i.e. temporal symmetry ≈ 0.5). Prior to treatment, saline and IDO-Gal3 treated rats used balanced, symmetric gaits. After treatment, the gait of saline treated rats became temporally asymmetric at weeks 8–11 (ŝymmetry > 0.5, p<0.05, Bonferroni-corrected t-test) and differed from IDO-Gal3 treatment at weeks 8–10 (p≤0.035, Tukey’s HSD pairwise test, Fig. 3B). Neither saline nor IDO-Gal3 treated animals had imbalanced stance times, though saline treated animals tended to spend more time on the contralateral limb (imbalance > 0) while IDO-Gal3 treated animals tended to spend more time on the affected limb (imbalance < 0). Here, at weeks 8 and 9, stance time imbalance differed between saline and IDO-Gal3 treated animals (p≤0.025, Tukey’s HSD pairwise test, Fig. 3C). Spatial symmetry measures the symmetry of the foot placement, rather than the timing of the foot strike. Again, a spatially symmetric gait has a right foot placement about halfway between two left foot placements (spatial symmetry ≈ 0.5). Here, both IDO-Gal3 and saline treated animals had spatially symmetric gait patterns throughout the experiment (Fig. 3D). This experiment includes over 1500 gait trials, with 65–131 trials collected at each treatment-timepoint. As such, data are plotted using density plots, with bars indicating the 95% confidence interval of each treatment-timepoint mean as predicted by our linear mixed effects statistical model.