Determination of the in vivo loads of the sheep spineIs the sheep a suitable model to study new treatment strategies for the intervertebral disc?

羊脊柱在组织学、解剖学、生物化学和生物力学行为上与人类脊柱有许多相似之处，这使得羊脊柱作为临床前脊柱研究的大型动物模型越来越受欢迎。尽管羊模型被广泛使用，但考虑到羊脊柱上的载荷性质尚不清楚，这些研究结果的相关性和有用性有时会受到质疑。因此，拟议的项目旨在确定各种活动的羊颈腰椎椎间盘的体内负荷。本研究结果将有助于补充现有数据，并为羊模型的生物力学环境提供更完整的表征。为此，将在第四颈椎和腰椎插入远程测量椎体置换。另外，一个压力传感器将被植入相邻的每个颅盘的中心。为了将羊作为不同脊柱研究问题的体内模型，将对不同活动的测量数据进行分析。因此，一个数据库将提供给研究人员和临床医生，从而使他们有机会准确地确定绵羊模型在未来椎间盘研究中是否适合代表人类。在其他离体研究中，真实的三维加载状态应该通过简化的、适用的体外加载条件来近似，从而允许在体外应用生理负载条件。

The sheep spine shares many histological, anatomical, biochemical and biomechanical behavioral similarities to the human spine, making it increasingly popular as a large animal model for preclinical spine studies. Despite the widespread use of the sheep model, the relevance and usefulness of the results of such studies is sometimes questioned, given that the nature of the loading on the sheep spine is not well known. Therefore, the proposed project is aimed at determining the in vivo loads of cervical and lumbar ovine discs for a variety of activities. The results of this study will serve to complement the existing data, and provide a more complete characterization of the biomechanical environment of the sheep model.For that purpose, a telemetrized vertebral body replacement will be inserted in the fourth cervical and lumbar vertebrae. Additionally, a pressure sensor will be implanted in the center of each adjacent cranial disc. To characterize the sheep as an in vivo model for different spine research questions, the measurement data will be analyzed for different activities. Thereby, a database will be made available to researchers and clinicians, thus allowing them the opportunity to accurately determine how suitable the sheep model is at representing humans for future investigations on the disc. In additional ex vivo studies, the real, three-dimensional loading state should be approximated by simplified, applicable in vitro loading conditions allowing the application of physiological load conditions in vitro.