Experimental hypertension. Development of "preventive pathology".

Rat models for hypertension, stroke, thrombosis, atherosclerosis and myocardial infarction were established by selective breeding and extensive studies in them contributed to the elucidation of genetic pathogenesis of these cardiovascular diseases. Since these models develop diseases spontaneously, not only the pathogenesis but also scientific prediction (detection of genetic disposition to diseases) and prevention can be studied experimentally, and these adult diseases caused by gene-environment interaction were proven to be detected early by disclosing genetic disposition and prevented by the modification of environmental factors such as dietary conditions through the intervention of gene-environment interaction in the pathogenesis. Thus, the establishment of various animal models of adult diseases opens a new field of experimental pathology, that is "preventive pathology", for investigating the basic principle and measures of the prediction and prevention of diseases.