Question

Which is likely to heal faster, a bone injury or a cartilage injury?

Answer 1

The bone injury.

Explanation:

The reason that bone injuries heal faster than cartilage injuries is because of the ability of bone cells to respond to injuries and start dividing to repair the injury.

Cartilage cells tend to be rather inactive once bone has fully grown and the chondrocytes (specialised cells that live within cartilage) do not respond to injury immediately, and they hardly divide after growth is complete.

Bone cells, on the other hand, are always active, because our bones are constantly being renewed. This process merely speeds up during a bone injury producing chondrocytes that act as a filler. Over a few weeks, specialised cells called osteoclasts ingest these cells and osteoblasts replace them with new bone cells.