QUALITY OF BEHAVIORAL TESTS PERFORMED IN AN EXPERIMENTAL MODEL OF OSTEOARTHRITIS IN RATS: AN ANALYSIS BASED ON THE LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic-degenerative joint disorder characterized by progressive degradation of articular cartilage, with inadequate tissue repair and inflammation. Thus, behavioral assessments in experimental models can provide important data on the assessment of pain and disease-related disability. METHODS: Searches were conducted in the PubMed database with the descriptors: "rats and osteoarthritis" and "rats and osteoarthritis tests analysis", for the period from 2013 to 2023, with 2831 and 88 results, respectively. The following inclusion criteria were adopted: publications in English, completely free manuscripts, associated data, and controlled and randomized trials. Review articles, systematic reviews, clinical trials, meta-analyses, books, and documents were excluded. After analysis, 24 articles were selected for this review. findings: Some behavioral measures may vary between different experimental models of osteoarthritis, which makes it unlikely that a single trial will capture all behavioral changes in the various induction models that exist. The main tests used to assess joint pain in experimental models are gait analysis, forced ambulation (RotaRod) and spontaneous pain quantification (Von Frey), whose analyses are subjective. For quantitative analyses, the thermal hyperalgesia and Weight Bearing tests are used