Fig. 2.

Probiotics reduce cartilage damage at the medial femoral condyle. A Cartilage damage scores assessed by the OARSI system at the Medial Femoral Condyle (MFC); the Medial Tibial Plateau (MTP); the Lateral Femoral Condyle (LFC); and the Lateral Tibial Plateau (LTP) of DMM-operated knee joints from two different treatment groups, vehicle (n = 10) and probiotics (n = 11). The results here are the sum of all OA scores across the knee joints. Each horizontal line indicates the mean value for each respective joint site and the circles represent individual values (*p < 0.007 between groups). B and C Representative photomicrograph from the medial femoral condyle (MFC) of DMM-operated knee joints in mice from the two different treatment groups. B shows the MFC with a score of two from a mouse in the vehicle treatment group with a vertical cleft in the superficial layer of cartilage (arrow). C shows the MFC with a score of one from a mouse in the probiotic treatment group. There are small cartilage surface fibrillations without cartilage loss