Thermogravimetry of irradiated human costal cartilage

Costal cartilage has been sterilized with gamma radiation using 60Co sources at two different doses, 25 kGy and 50 kGy, for storage in tissue banks. Samples of costal cartilage were deep-freezing as method of preservation. Thermogravimetry (Shimadzu TGA-50) was used to verify the water release of costal cartilage before and after irradiation. The TG tests were carried out at heating rate of 10 deg C/min from room temperature to 600 deg C under a flow rate of 50 mL/min of compressed air. Samples of costal cartilage were divided in 2 parts. One part of them was kept as reference material; the other part was irradiated. This procedure assures better homogeneity of the sample and reproducibility of the experimental results. The obtained data have shown that the TG curves have the same pattern, independently of the sample. Non-irradiated samples showed great variability of thermogravimetric curves among different donors and for the same donor. Further experimental work is being carried out on human cartilage preserved in glycerol in high concentration (> 98%) to compare with those deep freezing. (author)