A mini-review through the main behavioral animal models of depression and their metabolic relevance
A mini-review through the main behavioral animal models of depression and their metabolic relevance

Summary/Abstract: Depression is now one of the most important and prevalent psychiatric disease worldwide. It is believed that depression will represent the second leading cause of disability worldwide by 2020. One of the most important ways to further investigate the pathophysiological mechanisms and possible treatments for this psychiatric disorder (as for most diseases in general) could be represented by the usage of the animal models. Besides the important ethical aspects of the issue, it should be also mention that until now, there is no perfect animal model for any neuropsychiatric disorder, which are mainly developed to mimic one of the related mechanism of the specific disorder (e.g. behavioral modifications, gene alterations, affected neurotransmitter functioning). Thus, we describe in this mini-report the model of helplessness learned, chronic mild stress model and social defeat stress. Since there is also an increased awareness regarding the metabolic component for most of the neuropsychiatric disorder including depression, we will focus here on the latest aspect regarding the relevance of some metabolic modifications in depression pathophysiology and possibly in designing the animal models of depression.

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