Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal (CISA), Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), 28130 Valdeolmos, Spain.
Front Biosci (Landmark Ed). 2023 Jan 19;28(1):21. doi: 10.31083/j.fbl2801021.
Neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) are some of the most important health challenges modern medicine and advanced societies face. Indeed, the number of patients affected by one of these illnesses will increase in the following years at the same rate that human life expectancy allows us to live longer. Despite many years of research, NDs remain invariably fatal. A complete understanding of the exact mechanisms leading to neuronal death, which will ideally allow preclinical detection and the development of effective treatments, has not yet been achieved. However, a great deal of information about ND pathology and the search for possible therapies has been acquired using animal models and more precisely transgenic mouse models. In this review, the main contributions of these powerful research tools in NDs as well as their advantages and caveats are discussed.
神经退行性疾病（NDs）是现代医学和先进社会面临的最重要的健康挑战之一。事实上，随着人类预期寿命的延长，未来几年患此类疾病的患者数量将以同样的速度增加。尽管多年来进行了大量研究，但 NDs 仍然不可避免地致命。对于导致神经元死亡的确切机制，人们还没有完全理解，而这种机制理想情况下可以实现临床前检测和有效治疗方法的开发。然而，使用动物模型，更确切地说是转基因小鼠模型，已经获得了大量关于 ND 病理学和寻找可能疗法的信息。在这篇综述中，讨论了这些强大的研究工具在 NDs 中的主要贡献以及它们的优点和局限性。
