The use of animal models to study cardiovascular disease has made a significant contribution to our understanding of disease pathogenesis, resulting in the development of diagnostic techniques and assisting in the validation of the efficacy of preventive and therapeutic procedures, whether pharmacological or interventional.
While models for Cardiovascular Animal Testing will never exactly replicate the clinical scenario, they do allow for direct observation of certain events by allowing for good control of multiple factors while utilizing precise, and generally invasive, procedures that are difficult to deploy in clinical investigations. Animal model data must be evaluated for relevance to human pathology, and hence data gathered in either environment should be complementary.
Currently, animal research is a legal obligation for ensuring the safety of pharmaceuticals and various diagnostic and therapeutic procedures prior to their introduction into clinical practice. On the other hand, such experimental procedures are governed by a set of laws and regulations aimed at avoiding animal suffering during the course of conducting the experiments. 9,10 It is mandatory to implement the appropriate measures to ensure compliance with specified standards and approval procedures, as well as to monitor experimental techniques. To aid in the development and acceptance of alternative methods for demonstrating specific pathophysiological or therapeutic hypotheses, marketing-related techniques (e.g., in vitro production of substances based on animal models) and offering incentives for their use are two measures that may aid in creating favorable conditions for animal model experimentation.
The primary advantages of these models are the inclusion of control groups and the establishment of circumstances that could affect the results when one or more elements are varied. Some of the limitations originate from the variations between human and experimentally produced illnesses, such as changes in genetic regulatory pathways or cardiovascular function-related factors. Between phylogenetically dissimilar species, there may be significant anatomical variations, they may respond differently to pathophysiological causes, and pharmacological treatment may operate differently. As a result, extrapolating findings from basic research to human pathology should always be done with caution.