Physiological Characteristics of Various Experimental Models for the Study of Disorders in Purine Metabolism

Abstract

In recent years, decisive progress has been made in research on purine metabolism. Although at present highly effective drugs for the therapy of gout are available, the search for the therapeutic optimum is to be continued. Each form of gout (gouth with typical disorders in renal function, hyperproduction-induced gout and the hyperalimentation-induced gout, Lesh-Nyhan syndrome) should always be treated adequately. As in other fields of medicine, sufficient material from experimental investigations should be available for the detection of pathophysiological connexions. In the field of gout research, however, the animal experimental models are very inadequate. The main difficulty lies in the fact that the biochemical profile of purine metabolism in non-primate vertebrates shows distinct differences, i.e. these animals show relatively low uric acid values and excrete renally mainly allantoin instead of uric acid.