RESUMO
BACKGROUND:Animal models of atherosclerosis play an important role in the research of the pathogenesis, occurrence and development of atherosclerosis, as wel as in the prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis. OBJECTIVE:To summarize and discuss the establishment of atherosclerosis models, explore the current situation and advance of atherosclerosis models, compare the advantages and disadvantages of various methods, and provide evidence for clinical investigation. METHODS:A computer-based online search was conducted in SinoMed, VIP, Wanfang and PubMed databases by using the key words of “animal model, atherosclerosis, progression” from January 1990 to December 2014. The language was limited to both Chinese and English. Relevant articles were screened according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. The documents about the methods of atherosclerosis model preparation, method improvement as wel as their advantage and disadvantage were summarized. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: A total of 137 articles were included. Among them, 93 articles published earlier, duplicated, and similarly were excluded, and 44 references were finaly included. The results demonstrated that, the main characteristics of models established with the high-fit diet are lipid storage. This method is commonly used due to its fixable operation. However, this method needs a long time and the position of athermanous plaque is unstable. That’s the reason why immune method, nerve and mechanical damaged method, hemodynamic method and genetic engineering method emerge. These novel methods facilitate the model establishment, and have their advantages and disadvantages. To a certain extent, they are different from human spontaneous type. Partial ligation plays irreplaceable functions when studying complications of atherosclerosis. The athermanous plaque formed by baloon injury shows accurate position, which is convenient for researchers to observe the changes of athermanous plaque after conducting al kinds of interventions. This model based on immunological method could provide guidance of vaccine research for atherosclerosis prevention. Therefore, they can choose more appropriate model formation method according to their own needs.