Page6131 Indo American Journal of Pharmaceutical Research, 2013 ISSN NO: 2231-6876 Journal home page: http://www.iajpr.com/index.php/en/ INDO AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL RESEARCH ANIMAL MODELS OF RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS: CORRELATION AND USEFULNESS WITH HUMAN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS Tanushree Roy1* and Saikat Ghosh2 1 Department of Pharmacology, Gupta College of Technological Sciences, Asansol- 713301, West Bengal, India. 2 Departments of Pharmaceutical Technology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032, West Bengal, India. Corresponding author Tanushree Roy Department of Pharmacology, Gupta College of Technological Sciences, Asansol -713301, West Bengal. Email: roytanushree88@gmail.com Copy right © 2013 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Indo American journal of Pharmaceutical Research, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received 06 /08/2013 Available online 31/08/2013 Keywords Rheumatoid arthritis, Autoimmune, Etiology, Inflammation, Induced models, Genetic models Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is autoimmune systemic disorder caused by unknown etiology and characterized by chronic inflammation and synovial infiltration of immune cells. It’s also associated with decreased life expectancy and quality of life. Currently no treatment can effectively afford the complete amelioration of the symptoms while only offering temporary relief. Further the available treatments of DMARD’s (Disease Modifying Anti Rheumatoid Drugs) therapy are often associated with severe side effects. To find out exact cause behind the pathogenesis of this disease and evaluate the potential anti-arthritic drugs for clinical use various animal models were developed. The selection of appropriate animal models depends on two important criteria- morphological similarities with human RA and capacity to predict efficacy of various drugs in human. Various animal models include induced models like rat adjuvant arthritis, rat and mouse type II collagen arthritis, antigen induced arthritis, carrageen, formalin and urate induced arthritis and genetic models like K/BxN, Human TNF Tg, and NZB/NZW. The induced models were developed to predict the efficacy of anti-arthritic drugs while genetic models were developed to evaluate the progression of disease state in animals with an intention to establish a correlation with human RA in both cases. These models further allow predicting the toxicities which occur at higher doses or during prolonged dosing period. Although, various animal models emphasis the proven relevance to human rheumatoid arthritis. This shall help in the development of various therapeutic regimens for the effective treatment and mitigation of the disease conditions associated with RA. Please cite this article in press as Tanushree Roy et.al. Animal models of rheumatoid arthritis: correlation and usefulness with human rheumatoid arthritis. Indo American Journal of Pharm Research. 2013:3(8).