Animal models of asthma.

Studies in animal models form the basis for much of our current understanding of the pathophysiology of asthma, and are central to the preclinical development of drug therapies. No animal model completely recapitulates all features of the human disease, however. Research has focused primarily on ways to generate allergic inflammation by sensitizing and challenging animals with a variety of foreign proteins, leading to an increased understanding of the immunological factors that mediate the inflammatory response and its physiological expression in the form of airways hyperresponsiveness. Animal models of exaggerated airway narrowing are also lending support to the notion that asthma may represent an abnormality of the airway smooth muscle. The mouse is now the species of choice for asthma research involving animals. This presents practical challenges for physiological study because the mouse is so small, but modern imaging methodologies, coupled with the forced oscillation technique for measuring lung mechanics, have allowed the asthma phenotype in mice to be precisely characterized.