Animal models in Metabolic Syndrome

The first attempt to define metabolic syndrome is done in 1998 by WHO proposing a presence of insulin resistance, impaired glucose concentration essential component, along with at least two of the following parameters should be present, raised BP, hypertriglyceridemia and/or low HDL-cholesterol, obesity (as measured by waist/hip ratio or body mass index (BMI)), and microalbuminuria. The latest guideline of joint interim statement of IDF and AHA/NHLBL in 2009 simplifies definition stating presence of minimum any three of the following criteria, elevated abdominal circumference, triglycerides, fasting glucose, blood pressure and low HDL cholesterol. This joint definition is widely accepted by researcher. The metabolic syndrome is itself has interlinked diseases and condition involving genetic and environmental factor. Due to multifactorial condition establishment of appropriate experimental animal model mimicking the diseases state in human is crucial. This multifaceted effect of MetS has made researcher to put more effort in developing new intervention to reduce burden of disease worldwide. Various dietary models, genetic model, chemical model, drug induced model came into light to understand the diseases condition better. The major challenges to develop this model is expenses, as the metabolic syndrome animal model is quite expensive, it holds the researcher to experiment on primates and mammalian model which are like human. In this article we are going to see study procedure and outcome of zebrafish, rat, rabbit, canine, horse’s animal model of MetS.