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. 2010 Jun 26;49(10):1852–1861. doi: 10.1093/rheumatology/keq188

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© The Author(s) 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Society for Rheumatology.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Fig. 1 — Morphology and vascularity at the osteochondral junction in RA, PM controls and OA. (A) General morphology at the osteochondral junction. RA: fibrovascular granulation tissue filling bone marrow spaces and invading the articular cartilage from below. There is proteoglycan loss and thinning of the articular cartilage and subchondral bone plate. Inset: blood vessel and inflammatory cells within the subchondral bone space. PM: normal cartilage, thick subchondral bone containing vascular channels and bone marrow spaces filled with fatty tissue. OA: fibrovascular tissue within a channel touching the tidemark (inset) as well as fibrillation, fissuring and proteoglycan depletion in cartilage at the articular surface. (B) Smooth muscle α-actin-positive cells (black) in subchondral bone spaces and associated vascular channels. Insets: positive blood vessels within a vascular channel (RA) and subchondral space (OA). (C) Vascular channels stained for CD34-positive ECs (red), PCNA-positive nuclei (black) and non-proliferating nuclei [4′-6′-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI): fluorescent blue]. Proliferating ECs (long arrows) are demonstrated in a vascular channel that crosses the tidemark (broken line) in RA, and within the subchondral bone plate in OA. Proliferating non-ECs are also present (RA: short arrows). PM: vascular channel within the subchondral bone plate containing no proliferative ECs. Tissue morphology is revealed in (A) by Safranin O stain (red: proteoglycan; green: bone), with haematoxylin counterstain or (B and C) using combined transmitted and fluorescent light (blue/white: cartilage, bone and DAPI-reactive nuclei; yellow: background). Scale bars = 100 microns.