History for animal model of Hansen's disease and characteristic of leprosy in hypertensive nude rat

Abstract

The long search of an animal model for leprosy were carried out as many researchers since the Mycobacterium Jeprae discovery by Dr. Hansen in 1874. The remarkable results were left after the development of the foot-pad method by Dr. Shepard in 1960. The introduction of the T-R mouse and athymic (nude) mouse for leprosy research, alsospontaneity examples of Hansen's disease was reported to armadillo, chimpanzee and ma.ngabay monkey, and it was confirmed that Hansen's disease was the zoonosis. Although, We have established a congenic hypertensive nude rat, SHR/NCrj-rnu (SHR. F344-Foxn 1rnu), carrying nude (rnu) and hypertension genes. SHR/NCrj-rnu rats obtained showed high susceptibility to M.leprae and showed a characteristic disease with a progressive pattern o f leproma formation. Also this hypertensive nude rat strain produce high level of IL-10. Therefore, congenic hypertensive nude rat may be useful for an animal model to leprosy.