A short review on toxin-induced animal models of Huntington’s disease

BACKGROUND: Huntington's disease (HD) is a hereditary neurodegenerative motor and cognitive disorder. Different animal models of HD have been provided to study the different aspects of the disease, such as pathophysiology and treatment, and also the cure. Scientists need to choose the appropriate model for their goals, but it is often difficult because of the constraints. The low prevalence of HD often makes human studies impossible. For this reason, the availability of different animal models will be very helpful. METHODS: To write this article, we searched “Huntington's Disease”, “Huntington's Disease with Animal Models”, and “Toxin-Induced Models with Huntington's disease”, and then “3-Nitropropionic Acid”, “Malonic Acid”, “Kainic Acid”, “Quinolinic Acid”, all in combination with Huntington's Disease Animal Model in medical databases (such as PubMed, Scopus, etc.); then, all papers were reviewed, some excluded, and summarized as text and tables. RESULTS: Animal models of HD are divided into two general categories: toxin-induced models and genetic models. Although it is clear that the genetic models are more compatible with HD, it is important to study all others to find the best models according to your research goals. 3-nitropropionic acid (3-NPA), malonic acid (MA), kainic acid (KA), and quinolinic acid (QA) are toxins used in past studies to induce different aspects of HD. CONCLUSION: The 3-NPA model is the most frequent model used for this purpose, and after that, QA has been used more, but the other two models are less commonly used today. There are several different doses and routes of administration to induce toxin-induced HD models in different animals and for different purposes, and this diversity is misleading. That is why we have tried to compile all these models for researchers.