Animal Models of Behçet’s Disease

Abstract

Animal models for Behçet’s disease (BD) can be divided according to the proposed etiological paradigms. These include environmental pollution and infectious (bacterial and viral) models, as well as various autoimmune and transgenic animal models. The environmental pollution model, though resembles the multisystem symptoms of BD, has limitations to become utilized as a model for the disease since it is difficult to produce and the onset of symptoms appears erratically in a wide time range. The Streptococcal models have similarity only to the eye involvement in BD. This model is simple to induce with high rate of homogeneity. The HSV model has multisystem manifestations resembling BD; it has a moderate reproducibility. The autoimmune model utilizing S-Ag is a monosymptomatic model of BD-like uveitis. This model is easy to induce, and extensive studies elucidated some of the immunological characteristics of BD including the paradigm of anti-HLA autoimmunity. The α-tropomyosin model shares some clinical features of BD. This model has a potential to become a useful autoimmune model for BD. The only published trial to establish a transgenic model for BD did not show any significant similarity to the human disease except hyper-responsiveness of neutrophils.