Effect of Estrogen on ACL strength of skeletally mature rabbits
The objective of this project was to develop a method to analyze whether estrogen had a detrimental effect on the strength of the ACL. This would help to explain why female athletes are 3 to 10 times more likely to injure their ACL than their male counterparts. Initially, strain rates of 117/s, 273/s, and 490/s were utilized to determine the strength of the ACL. It was determined that the strength tended to decrease with increasing strain rate; however, only strain rates of 117/s and 490/s showed a statistical significance in strength reduction of 28.8. More importantly, a comparison of an estrogen treated group to a control group showed a statistically significant decrease of 37.7 in the strength of the ACL.
In addition, the study showed that the implants used to treat the specimens with estrogen had no significant effect on the properties of the ACL. Furthermore, the modes of ACL failure were consistent with the cases observed in clinical studies. That is, all specimens in the strain rate study underwent ligamentous tears and/or bone-ligament interface tears, as did 83 of the estrogen controlled specimens.
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