Although the etiology of psychosis is complex and diverse, including environmental factors and genetic factors, animal models have increased our understanding of brain pathology of psychiatric disorders. Also, these models allow the identification of drug treatment pathways and improve the screening and validation of potential novel antipsychotics.
Background of Animal Models in Psychiatric Behaviors
Animal models of psychiatric disorders are a challenging but highly relevant problem. Most psychiatric disorders are very heterogeneous syndromes caused by a variety of causal factors, characterized by obvious limitations that can be inferred only in non-human models. Since it is almost impossible to construct a model that replicates the entire psychiatric syndrome, the researchers tried to focus on the endophenotypes, that is, closer to the discrete characteristics of susceptibility genes than to the entire syndrome. These can be explored in a wide range of methods, such as in pharmacology, lesion and environmental models. In addition, these animal models are also possible to understand how genes interact with environmental factors over time leading to syndrome phenotypes.
Operational Strategies of Animal Models in Creative Biolabs
Animal models are often sought to meet the requirements of face, predictive and construct validity. With the continuous improvement of the model and our understanding of the pathophysiology of psychosis, it is possible to develop more rapid and effective treatment methods and less side effects compared with the currently available drugs. At present, Creative Biolabs provides animal models for the study of psychosis, including three categories: stress-induced, drug-induced and genetic manipulated.
Drug-induced animal model is the most common model for psychiatric research. It is constructed by using drug therapy or "drug-induced state" to produce psychotic-like symptoms in non-psychotic animals. The most commonly used drugs are dopamine enhancers (such as amphetamine and apomorphine) and noncompetitive N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonists (PCP, ketamine and MK-801).
Stress has been considered to be an important factor in the development or recurrence of various psychiatric disorders, from major depressive disorder to bipolar disorder to anxiety disorder. The development of stress-induced animal model can be used to study the dynamic interaction between stress stimulation and psychosis susceptible individuals.
For a long time, genetic factors of psychiatric disorders have been the focus of research and the basis of several animal models. With the development of genome-wide association studies, some psychosis related loci have been identified. Many of these genes have been used to generate animal models of psychiatric disorders, and the new loci will allow for more models in mice.
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