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Editors Selection IGR 16-4

Basic science: Animal models

Comment by Paul Kaufman on:

13191 Repeat sample intraocular pressure variance in induced and naturally ocular hypertensive monkeys, Dawson WW; Dawson JC; Hope GM et al., Journal of Glaucoma, 2005; 14: 426-431

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Dawson et al. (829) describe large IOP repeat-sample variance in laser induced monkey ocular hypertension as opposed to naturally occurring monkey ocular hypertension. Everyone who uses the laser OHT monkey model knows how variable the IOP can be in individual animals. Partly this represents high IOP from any mechanism being more variable than lower IOP (the same phenomenon for IOP lowering being greater at high IOP than at lower IOP for a given percentile effect on any AHD parameter).More importantly, it also indicates that the laser model is much more 'pathologic' than the 'natural' diseases. It is important to remember that the issue is not the monkey being non-representative of the human, but rather the laser model not being representative of anything except the phenomenon of high IOP - and thus useful for studying optic nerve and brain effects of high IOP, and to amplify IOP lowering drug effects (making them easier to detect), assuming that the laser scanfication does not interfere with the drug's mechanism. The laser model gives little insight into the function of the trabecular meshwork in health or in something analogous to human disease; if the subjects and conditions are chosen appropriately, it may give insight into the pathophysiology of pressure-related glaucomatous optic neuropathy. The naturally-occurring models of OHT in non-human primates described by the authors may better reflect human disease, but may be temporally challenging, even if such animals were available in larger numbers as a result of selective breeding.

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