Osteoarthritis of the knee is one of the most common musculoskeletal disorders with major pathological changes occurring in the structure of hyaline cartilage. Differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) examination is a well-established method for the demonstration of thermal consequences of local and global conformational changes in biological systems. With foregoing studies authors have demonstrated the feasibility of DSC in the investigation of the hyaline cartilage. The aim of this study was to establish the thermograms of hyaline cartilage degeneration in the knee joint, experimentally induced in rabbits. The calorimetric experiment of osteoarthritic samples in rabbits resulted in scans similar to those observed earlier in human samples. Measurements were reproducible both in terms of changes in total enthalpy and heat capacity and in the shape of DSC scans themselves. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.