Of mice and men: what rodent models don't tell us

Work recently published in PNAS by The Inflammation and Host Response to Injury, Large Scale Collaborative Research Program 1 compared the transcriptional responses in peripheral blood to inflammatory injuries (burns, blunt force trauma) and to endotoxin in human patients and in corresponding mouse models. The results were startling: while the human patients showed similar transcriptional responses to burns, trauma and endotoxemia, the mouse models showed little correlation either to each other or the human response. These differences extended beyond acute gene response and were also apparent in markedly slower recovery from injury, with gene expression not returning after weeks or months in patients as opposed to days in mouse models.