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Total hip arthroplasty (THA) alleviates hip pain and improves joint function. Current implant design permits long-term survivorship of THAs, but certain metal-on-metal (MoM) articulations can portend catastrophic failure due to adverse local tissue reactions (ALTR). Here, we identified biological and molecular differences between periacetabular synovial tissues of patients with MoM THA failure undergoing revision THA compared to patients undergoing primary THA for routine osteoarthritis (OA). Analysis of tissue biopsies by RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) revealed that MoM patient samples exhibit significantly increased expression of immune response genes but decreased expression of genes related to extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling. Thus, interplay between local tissue inflammation and ECM degradation may account for the pathology and compromised clinical outcomes in select patients with MoM implants. We conclude that adverse responses of host tissues to implant materials result in transcriptomic modifications in patients with MoM implants that permit consideration of strategies that could mitigate ECM damage., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a durable and reliable procedure to alleviate pain and improve joint function. However, failures related to flexion instability sometimes occur. The goal of this study was to define biological differences between tissues from patients with and without flexion instability of the knee after TKA. Human knee joint capsule tissues were collected at the time of primary or revision TKAs and analyzed by RT-qPCR and RNA-seq, revealing novel patterns of differential gene expression between the two groups. Interestingly, genes related to collagen production and extracellular matrix (ECM) degradation were higher in samples from patients with flexion instability. Partitioned clustering analyses further emphasized differential gene expression patterns between sample types that may help guide clinical interpretations of this complication. Future efforts to disentangle the effects of physical and biological (e.g., transcriptomic modifications) risk factors will aid in further characterizing and avoiding flexion instability after TKA., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)