Contribution of animal models to diabetes research: Its history, significance, and translation to humans

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is still expanding globally and is epidemic in developing countries. The combat of this plague has caused enormous economic and social burdens related to a lowered quality of life in people with diabetes. Despite recent significant improvements of life expectancy in patients with diabetes, there is still a need for efforts to elucidate the complexities and mechanisms of the disease processes to overcome this difficult disorder. To this end, the use of appropriate animal models in diabetes studies is invaluable for translation to humans and for the development of effective treatment. In this review, a variety of animal models of diabetes with spontaneous onset in particular will be introduced and discussed for their implication in diabetes research.

Keywords: animal model; diabetes mellitus; pathophysiology.

Figure 1

Late Professor Yoshio Goto, Founder of the Japan Society of Experimental Diabetes and Obesity, Emeritus Professor of Tohoku University.

Figure 2

Characteristic features of different species of animal models for diabetes mellitus. There are a variety of animal models for diabetes mellitus research which have distinct advantages (green square) and shortcomings (red square). As shown in the figure, non‐mammalian models have the advantages of a low maintenance cost and a short life cycle. By contrast, the physiology of large animals, especially that of non‐human primates, closely resembles human physiology. However, these species have high maintenance costs and long life cycles. As such, these models are unfeasible for large scale, time efficient experiments. Small rodents represent a good combination of throughput and translational physiology (modified from Kleinert et al. ⁵ ).