Our next Clinical Club will be taking place via Zoom at 8.30pm on Monday 24th November.
This time, we will be running the club slightly differently and discussing a recent talk at the International Cartilage Repair Society conference in Boston last month. The talk was on the ‘Circadian Clock – The Rhythm of Cartilage and its Relevance for its Homeostasis’.
We would like to roughly follow this topic and give time to discuss your own thoughts and experiences regarding this subject.
If you are interested in attending, please email me at info@bvrsma.org.uk for a summary of the topic which includes relevant papers as well as the zoom invite.
Below is the abstract from the guest speaker.
‘Daily rhythms in mammalian behaviour and physiology are generated by a multi-oscillator circadian system entrained through environmental cues (e.g. light and feeding). The circadian (24 hourly) clocks are the evolutionarily conserved biological timers that exist in almost all cells of the body. Circadian clocks in the brain and periphery temporally regulate key aspects of physiology through rhythmic control of tissue-specific sets of downstream genes. Work from our group focuses on the roles of circadian clocks in the articular cartilage. We have shown that the daily rhythm in cartilage becomes dampened and out-of-phase during ageing. Further, our data identify circadian clock disruption in cartilage as a target of inflammation. Moreover, we show that mice with targeted knockout of an essential clock gene (BMAL1) in chondrocytes have profound, yet tissue-specific degeneration in the articular cartilage. These findings implicate the local cartilage clock as a key regulatory mechanism for tissue homeostasis. More recently, we show that mechanical loading and associated osmotic change within physiological ranges reset circadian clock phase and amplitude in cartilage and intervertebral disc tissues in vivo and in tissue explant cultures. Importantly, dampened circadian rhythms in ageing skeletal system can be resynchronised by daily cycles of mechanical loading, and hyperosmotic challenge. These results reveal diurnal patterns of mechanical loading and consequent daily oscillations in osmolarity as a bona fide tissue niche-specific time cue to maintain skeletal circadian rhythms in sync. These findings also suggest that time-prescribed physical exercise could be an effective intervention to slow down tissue ageing and restore homeostasis in osteoarthritic joints by improving circadian regulated pathways.’
We look forward to seeing you there!