Ghanemi Abdelaziz, Yoshioka Mayumi, St-Amand Jonny
Department of Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Laval University, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada.
Functional Genomics Laboratory, Endocrinology and Nephrology Axis, CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Center, 2705 Boul. Laurier, Québec, QC G1V 4G2, Canada.
Medicina (Kaunas). 2021 Apr 21;57(5):399. doi: 10.3390/medicina57050399.
With the advances in obesity research, a variety of animal models have been developed to investigate obesity pathogenesis, development, therapies and complications. Such obese animals would not only allow us to explore obesity but would also represent models to study diseases and conditions that develop with obesity or where obesity represents a risk factor. Indeed, obese subjects, as well as animal models of obesity, develop pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, inflammation and metabolic disorders. Therefore, obese animals would represent models for numerous diseases. Although those diseases can be induced in animals by chemicals or drugs without obesity development, having them developed as consequences of obesity has numerous advantages. These advantages include mimicking natural pathogenesis processes, using diversity in obesity models (diet, animal species) to study the related variabilities and exploring disease intensity and reversibility depending on obesity development and treatments. Importantly, therapeutic implications and pharmacological tests represent key advantages too. On the other hand, obesity prevalence is continuously increasing, and, therefore, the likelihood of having a patient suffering simultaneously from obesity and a particular disease is increasing. Thus, studying diverse diseases in obese animals (either induced naturally or developed) would allow researchers to build a library of data related to the patterns or specificities of obese patients within the context of pathologies. This may lead to a new branch of medicine specifically dedicated to the diseases and care of obese patients, similar to geriatric medicine, which focuses on the elderly population.
随着肥胖研究的进展，已经开发出多种动物模型来研究肥胖的发病机制、发展、治疗方法和并发症。这些肥胖动物不仅能让我们探索肥胖，还能代表研究与肥胖相关疾病或肥胖作为危险因素的疾病和病症的模型。事实上，肥胖个体以及肥胖动物模型都会出现诸如心血管疾病、糖尿病、炎症和代谢紊乱等病理状况。因此，肥胖动物可代表多种疾病的模型。虽然这些疾病可通过化学物质或药物在动物身上诱发而不引发肥胖，但因肥胖而引发这些疾病具有诸多优势。这些优势包括模拟自然发病过程、利用肥胖模型（饮食、动物种类）的多样性来研究相关变异性，以及根据肥胖的发展和治疗探索疾病的严重程度和可逆性。重要的是，治疗意义和药理学测试也是关键优势。另一方面，肥胖患病率在持续上升，因此，患者同时患有肥胖症和某种特定疾病的可能性也在增加。因此，在肥胖动物（无论是自然诱发还是后天形成）身上研究各种疾病，将使研究人员能够建立一个与肥胖患者在病理情况下的模式或特异性相关的数据库。这可能会催生一个专门致力于肥胖患者疾病和护理的新医学分支，类似于专注于老年人群的老年医学。
