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Updated: May 9, 2026

A Proinflammatory, Degenerative Organ Culture Model to Simulate Early-Stage Intervertebral Disc Disease.
Published on: February 14, 2021
Significant pathways response to osmotic stimuli in the intervertebral disc
1Department of Orthopedics, Shanghai First People's Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China.
Background:
The intervertebral disc (IVD) is a special tissue localized in the middle of vertebrae and it often experiences osmotic environment to accommodate applied mechanical forces.
Aim:
Here we aim to confirm significant pathways associated with IVD osmotic regulation.
Materials And Methods:
Two different pathway analyses which are named component-based approach and protein-protein interaction (PPI)-based approach are used to identify the significant pathways from the related databases.
Results:
The results showed that neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction pathway was specifically identified based on traditional significant pathway analysis. New significant pathway analysis indicated that ErbB signaling pathway, nucleotide excision repair, progesterone-mediated oocyte maturation pathway, and alpha-Linolenic acid metabolism pathway, etc. were all associated with osmotic regulation. Importantly, progesterone-mediated oocyte maturation pathway was only significant in the hyper-osmotic dataset, however, alpha-Linolenic acid metabolism pathway in the hypo-osmotic dataset.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that IVD accommodation mechanism is important in response to osmotic stimuli.
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