Establishment of blood lipids variation-based experimental hyperlipidemia animal model: a review

Nowaday, the prevalence of dyslipidemia has developed into a global public health problem. The screening of lipid-lowering active substances and the study of their mechanism have received extensive attention, and the establishment of hyperlipidemia model is the premise of relative studies. In the study, hyperlipidemic animal models established with different factors such as dietary composition, food/environmental pollution factors and drug stimulation are summarized and analyzed from the aspects of blood lipid changes, inducer ratio/dose, modeling mechanism and modeling cycle. It is shown that 4 – 8 weeks free feeding of high-fat diet and 4 – 6 weeks intragastric administration of fat emulsion can cause lipid accumulation in experimental animals; egg yolk or fat emulsion injection can cause a significant increase in plasma triglycide in animals within 2 hours – 2 days. The high-fat/high-glucose-induced C. elegans or zebrafish high-fat model can be used as a rapid screening model for lipid-lowering actives. Both food contaminant 1, 3-dichloro-2-propanol and environmental pollutant heavy metal lead can induce stable mixed hyperlipidemia; detergents Triton and poloxamer can induce an acute model with clear mechanism; and hormone can induce kidney deficiency type hyperlipidemia. Congenital dyslipidemia and gene knockout models are often applied to in-depth mechanistic studies. The establishment method of hyperlipidemia model has various advantages and disadvantages. It is necessary to establish a suitable/efficient high-fat model according to studies on the development of natural lipid-lowering active substances.