Animal models of human lipid metabolism

Co-administration of berberine and plant stanols synergistically reduces plasma cholesterol in rats

“…This discrepancy may have resulted from the differences in the diet composition, especially dietary cholesterol and fat levels, bile acid supplementation, and the time of BBR administration between the present study and previous studies [13,26,42,43]. It could also be due to the differences in cholesterol metabolism between humans and animal species [44][45][46]. In addition, it should be noted that the effect of BBR on blood cholesterol in rats was previously examined only in disease models such as diabetes or nephritis [42,43,47].…”

Spontaneous Atherosclerosis in Pigeons: A Good Model of Human Disease

“…The phenotype should resemble the human physiological condition as closely as possible in both the normal and diseased state (Moghadasian et al, 2001). There are additional practical issues to consider such as the size of the animal and housing requirements, generation times, and the specific cost of overall maintenance, including food, daily care, and experimental treatment (Moghadasian et al, 2001;Suckling, & Jackson, 1993). These concerns become especially important with the development of transgenic models, in that the associated investment costs are much higher than with traditional animal studies.…”

“…Subsequently, over 600 human LDLR gene mutations similar to FH that trigger varying degrees of hypercholesterolemia have been identified (Goldstein & Brown, 2001). In addition, hamsters, rabbits and primates have repeatedly shown reduced functional capacity of hepatic receptors in response to a high fat (Suckling & Jackson, 1993) diet. Individual LDLR activity varied in response to dietary fat and cholesterol because primates, like humans, dogs, and rabbits can be hypo-or hyperresponsive to diet (Goldstein & Brown, 2001;Moghadasian et al, 2001;Overturf et al, 1990;Stein et al, 2002), with some individuals demonstrating unique resistance.…”

“…Selected disease characteristics in animal models with their relationship to the human atherosclerosis are presented in Table 1. Animal lipid metabolism studies become complicated because the majority of circulating cholesterol is in HDL (Suckling & Jackson, 1993) for most species except humans who utilize LDL (Garcia et al, 2001). For example, a decrease in plasma HDL has been associated with a reduced risk of atherosclerosis in mice (Breslow, 2000).…”

The effect of cyclic AMP analogues and glucagon on cholesteryl ester synthesis and hydrolysis in cultured hamster hepatocytes

“…Rat hepatocytes have been used to study the effects of CAMP on cholesterol and bile acid synthesis [13--15], but it has become recognised recently that the hamster may be a better model for cholesterol metabolism in the human in a number of important respects [16]. Cell-permeable CAMP analgues have been developed to facilitate studies with intact cells, and many of these compounds have the additional advantage that they bind preferentially to a specific binding site on the CAMP-dependent protein kinase and are often more potent than the parent compound [17].…”