Animal Models in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Lee, Seo Kyong; Bahn, Geon Ho

Abstract

In studying child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP), animal models are extremely useful to explore the pathogenesis of disorders or to experiment drugs as substitutes for the human body. Particularly in young children, the accuracy of their expression can be low and there are many restrictions in experiments directly upon the patients including difficulties in medication and tests. However, it is not easy to develop animal models because standards for diagnosis are phenomenological and based on behavioral descriptions. The biggest problem in research using animal models in CAP is that it is difficult to make representative models specific to each disorder. The present study reviewed articles about research with animal models in connection to disorders common in CAP such as autism , Tourette syndrome (TS), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and mental retardation (MR). Recent researches through animal models are mainly focused on anatomical studies on sites related to disorders and genetic studies. Although there have been many researches for autism, they still seem to be away from establishing representative models. For TS, it is not easy to make specific animal models because of the complexity of the syndrome, but animal models have been greatly helpful to find pathogenesis and develop remedies for TS. In ADHD, Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats (SHR) model is recognized as a fine model. With regard to MR, a majority of studies are gene researches related to known abnormal chromosomes. Throughout this review, authors recognized that only few articles have been published using animal models for CAP in Korea. We hope that research using animal models will be more activated in Korea.