The Mongolian gerbil: A robust model of helicobacter pylori-induced gastric inflammation and cancer

Abstract

The Mongolian gerbil is an efficient, robust, and cost-effective rodent model that recapitulates many features of H. pylori-induced gastric inflammation and carcinogenesis in humans, allowing for targeted investigation of the bacterial determinants and environmental factors and, to a lesser degree, host constituents that govern H. pylori-mediated disease. This chapter discusses means through which the Mongolian gerbil model has been used to define mechanisms of H. pylori-inflammation and cancer as well as the current materials and methods for utilizing this model of microbially induced disease.