Fig. 4

Computational modeling of cell- and tissue-level secretion profiles for inflammatory mediators in response to strain. TGFβ1 (a) and IL-1β (b) profiles were predicted by a Hill-equation model for individual cells, the elementary cell response (ECR), and for cells in the whole tendon, tissue-level response (TLR). In the TLR, the secretion profile is U-shaped, as both low and high strain lead to a simulated “unloading” response of the tissue. Low tendon strain is “underuse” and high tendon strain leads to collagen fiber rupture and unloading of the cells. Figure reprinted with permission by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg from Mehdizadeh et al. 2017 [133]