The planning stage includes the following items:
a) creation of a working hypothesis;
b) setting the goal and objectives of the study;
c) determination of the object of the experiment (species, age, sex of animals);
d) drawing up an experiment scheme (nature and frequency of pathogenic effects, dose, duration, etc;)
e) determination of the scope of research (number of experimental animals and research groups, list of specific methods to be used).
The stage of disease modeling involves the experimental reproduction of diseases and pathological processes. The main methods of disease modeling:
- method of removal (removal of the liver to model liver failure, pancreas to model diabetes, etc;)
- method of destruction or damage - surgical interventions are used (nerve crossing, destruction of nerve centers, tissue damage, etc.), physical factors (temperature, ionizing radiation, etc.), chemicals (poisons, inhibitors), immune effects (antibodies, anti-tissue sera)
- overload method (modeling neuroses by causing functional overloads of higher CNS centers, heart failure by creating artificial heart defects, etc;)
- a method of creating deficits (modeling hypoxia by limiting the amount of oxygen in a barocamp, hypo- and avitaminosis by using diets that do not contain vitamins, etc;)
- the method of disruption of nervous and humoral regulation (carried out by irritation or damage to nervous structures, pharmacological interventions in the metabolism of neurotransmitters, the introduction of large amounts of hormones, etc;)
- method of creating obstacles (ligation of a vessel to model myocardial infarction and arterial hypertension, common bile duct - mechanical jaundice, etc;)
- exogenous induction method (modeling of infectious diseases, malignant tumors, allergies by introducing into the body or exposing it to factors that are specific pathogens);
- transplantation method (in the study of tumor growth, atherosclerosis, allergic reactions);
- explantation method - study of pathological processes outside the body: in tissue cultures, on isolated organs (in the study of tumor growth, atherosclerosis, allergic reactions);
- transgenic technologies - breeding animal lines with predetermined genetic defects that lead to disease development (for the study of hereditary diseases, atherosclerosis and arterial hypertension, malignant tumors, endocrine diseases, inflammation).
The stage of obtaining scientific facts. When modeling a disease, researchers try to obtain as much information as possible about changes in the body of experimental animals during the dynamics of the pathological process and at the end of it (after the animal is slaughtered). For this purpose, various methods are used, namely
- morphological (macroscopic examination, light and electron microscopy, etc.)
- functional (recording of muscle contractions, electrocardiography, encephalography, recording of spirograms, determination of oxygen consumption, etc;)
- biochemical (determination of the concentration of substrates, hormones, electrolytes, metabolic products, enzyme activity);
- immunological (determination of the type of antibodies, lymphocyte blast transformation, etc.)