Lung bacterial infections. Animal models
Pneumonia is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, especially among children and the elderly people. Nosocomial pneumonia in a hospital setting is one of the most serious infectious complications often caused by opportunistic pathogens. There is an urgent need for improved treatment and prevention of pneumonia. Therefore, animal models have been developed to better understand the pathogenesis of the disease, testing new drugs and vaccines This review summarizes scientific studies about animal models of bacterial pneumonia as well as the main causative agents of the disease, routes of infectious agents administration and estimated parameters. Various microorganisms such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, Legionella pneumophila, Haemophilus influenzae, Neisseria meningitidis, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter baumannii, Klebsiella pneumoniae are considered in this review as a causative agents of bacterial pneumonia. The most popular microorganism used for modeling pneumonia is Streptococcus pneumoniae. According to data presented in scientific articles, mice, rats, rabbits, pigs and primates are used as a test system for modeling bacterial pneumonia. Mice are the most suitable animals for bacterial pneumonia studies. This type of animal is easy to handle and allows to use the sufficient number of animals for results evaluation. The main assessed parameters in pneumonia studies are data about clinical signs, survival, bacteremia, the number of bacteria in the lungs, pathological and histological characteristics, quantitative assessment of antibody titers, markers of inflammation etc. Depending on the purpose of the study methods of bacterial inoculum administration are differ. An intravenous and intraperitoneal route of administration is used to assess virulence, an intratracheal route of administration is used to study the effectiveness of new antibiotics, and an inoculum is administered intramuscularly to animals when developing new vaccines for bacterial pneumonia the choice of animals, the type of microorganism, the method of infection and the estimated parameters depends on the tasks and research objectives.