The transition dairy cow: an innovative animal model for nutritional and metabolic studies in human pregnancy
Abstract
: Animal models remain indispensable for translational biomedicine, yet their predictive power has been disproportionately concentrated in a narrow range of laboratory species that only partially recapitulate the physiological complexity of human gestation. Pregnant women face unique metabolic challenges, including pregnancy-associated fatty liver disorders, where the development of effective prevention and therapeutic strategies is constrained by substantial technical and ethical barriers to direct investigation. Here we propose that the periparturient dairy cow, a monotocous mammal with a roughly 280-day gestation and spontaneous postpartum hepatic lipid accumulation, offers a complementary large-animal model for studying pregnancy-related metabolic dysfunction. Although etiologically distinct, the two conditions converge on shared histological features, serum biochemical alterations, and dysregulated PPARα, SREBP-1c and FXR signaling axes. Recent advances in cross-species multi-omics and non-invasive monitoring technologies, now enable longitudinal mechanistic comparisons in dairy herds with minimal ethical constraint, an advantage largely unattainable in human pregnancy cohorts. Critically, deciphering the pathophysiology of fatty liver in cattle carries dual translational value for veterinary herd health and for human hepatology, thereby aligning with the One Health paradigm. This review provides a conceptual rationale and critically assesses the evidence supporting the…
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Evidence Hub reads this as a review, done in animal, not in people. Its evidence level is 5 of 5 (Very low · case / narrative / animal / in vitro / in silico). Case reports, narrative reviews, and animal, cell or computer-model studies give the weakest evidence for human health.
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