Table 5.

Healthy control animals—relative gene expression data (normalized to β-actin)

Healthy animals (n = 4)	L1-2			L2-3			L3-4			L4-5
Gene	Mean	Median	SD	Mean	Median	SD	Mean	Median	SD	Mean	Median	SD
COL1A2	0.07	0.04	0.08	0.17	0.19	0.12	0.14	0.08	0.16	0.10	0.10	0.02
COL2A1	7.80	2.76	11.50	6.30	6.50	6.10	12.50	7.30	14.80	6.20	2.20	5.40
COL10A1	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.02	0.04	0.01	0.06	0.01	0.01	0.01
ACAN	0.53	0.43	0.36	1.60	0.67	2.40	1.00	0.63	1.10	0.76	0.58	0.39
IL1β	0.002	0.002	0.001	0.005	0.004	0.003	0.033	0.003	0.061	0.005	0.002	0.007
PRG4	0.68	0.40	0.83	0.19	0.14	0.15	0.20	0.20	0.15	0.19	0.17	0.19

Mean values, medians and standard deviations SD are given. No statistical significance was observed for any of the tested genes in the different disc segments (ANOVA/Kruskal–Wallis One Way Analysis of Variance)