The advantages and limitations of animal models for understanding acute neonatal brain injury
Abstract
Neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) remains a major cause of death and disability around the world. Therapeutic hypothermia is now established to improve outcomes in term and near-term infants in high-income countries, but even in this setting, many infants still survive with disability. To further improve outcomes, experimental models are needed to test new interventions before clinical translation. In the present review, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a range of near-term and term models and their utility for understanding the pathophysiology of HIE and to test potential treatments. It is important to reflect that the strength of the evidence base for therapeutic hypothermia before it went to trial was that multiple groups using different and complementary models all showed benefit and that these models had been used to define the key parameters needed to achieve neuroprotection. We strongly advocate that this should be the expectation for all new neuroprotective interventions before large pragmatic randomized controlled trials are carried out.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Improving sleep quality leads to better mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials
- Tocilizumab in patients with severe COVID-19: a retrospective cohort study
- A new aging measure captures morbidity and mortality risk across diverse subpopulations from NHANES IV: A cohort study
- Fruit, vegetable, and legume intake, and cardiovascular disease and deaths in 18 countries (PURE): a prospective cohort study
- Are noise and air pollution related to the incidence of dementia? A cohort study in London, England
- Long COVID symptoms and duration in SARS-CoV-2 positive children — a nationwide cohort study
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.