Can animal models of disease reliably inform human studies?

"The value of animal experiments for predicting the effectiveness of treatment strategies in clinical trials has remained controversial, mainly because of a recurrent failure of interventions apparently promising in animal models to translate to the clinic," say authors in a Research in Translation piece published in PLoS Medicine this week. The PLoS Medicine magazine article by H. van der Worp (University Medicine Centre Utrecht) and colleagues discusses the controversies and possibilities of translating the results of animal experiments into human clinical trials.

Related research, published in PLoS Biology, shows how selective reporting of medical research carried out on animals may be creating a false impression of how effective drugs might be. A team of researchers, led by the University of Edinburgh, say this is because medical journals are more likely to publish positive results that highlight medical advances than negative or neutral findings, which are deemed less interesting.

More information:
van der Worp HB, Howells DW, Sena ES, Porritt MJ, Rewell S, et al. (2010) Can Animal Models of Disease Reliably Inform Human Studies? PLoS Med 7(3): e1000245. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000245

Provided by Public Library of Science