Historic perspectives and recent advances in major animal models of hypertension

Hypertension and related cardiovascular diseases are the leading causes of deathin many countries.The etiology of human essential hypertension is largelyunknown.It is highly likely that hypertension is a complex and multifactorialdisease resulting from the interaction of multiple genetic and environmental factors.Animal models of hypertension have been proved to be useful to study the patho-genesis of,and to find a new therapy for,hypertension.The aim of this article isto briefly review the most widely used rodent models of experimental hypertension,including history and recent advances.These models are classified as geneti-cally-induced,environmentally-induced,pharmacologically-induced,and renal-induced hypertension according to the way of induction;the typical representa-tives of each of these major types of experimental hypertension are spontaneoushypertension,cold-induced hypertension,DOCA-salt-induced hypertension,andrenal-induced hypertension,respectively.The processes of induction of hyper-tension,possible pathogenesis,characteristics,advantages,and limitations ofthese animal models are reviewed.In addition,the clinical implications of theabove experimental models of hypertension are addressed.