Animal models of chronic kidney disease: Screening tool to investigate nephroprotective effects of natural products

Animals are used as experimental models to reproduce human diseases. To date, various animal models have been successfully developed by numerous methods to simulate human diseases including chronic kidney disease (CKD). Such models have played a central role in developing dialysis, transplantation experiments and more importantly in the discovery of new therapeutic agents from natural product for the care of patients with kidney disease. This review focuses on key information on in vivo models of CKD that have been developed through spontaneous, acquired and genetic approaches. Most of the experiments related to CKD have been carried out on rodent models such as mice and rats. Spontaneous disease models of CKD are generated by various metabolic and immunological methods. Nephrotoxic agents including adenine, adriamycin, cisplatin, folic acid, aristolochic acid and oxalate are used to induce CKD in addition to nephrectomy and unilateral ureteral obstruction models. Further, animal models developed through forward and reverse genetic approaches provide artificial models of CKD. Developing animal models to approximate human CKD is a challenging task since it requires reflecting the effect of age, sex, and comorbidities in addition to the disease condition. But, their usage to tease out the processes which can cause pathologic changes in a biological system is still important for the health care improvements related to CKD. However, no animal model can exactly simulate response in human CKD. Keywords: Acquired methods, Animal models, Chronic kidney disease, Genetic approaches, Nephrotoxic agents, Spontaneous models