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Horses and cows might teach us about human knees
C Holland1, F Vollrath, H S Gill
1Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, UK.
Abstract:
Our comparative study of the knees of horses and cows (paraphrased as highly evolved joggers and as domesticated couch-potatoes, respectively) demonstrates significant differences in the posterior sections of bovine and equine tibial cartilage, which are consistent with specialisation for gait. These insights were possible using a novel analytical measuring technique based on the shearing of small biopsy samples, called dynamic shear analysis. We assert that this technique could provide a powerful new tool to precisely quantify the pathology of osteoarthritis for the medical field.
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