Animal models of disease have always been welcomed by the scientific community because they provide
an approach to the investigation of certain aspects of the disease in question.
Animal models of COPD cannot reproduce the heterogeneity of the disease and usually only manage
to represent the disease in its milder stages. Moreover, airflow obstruction, the variable that determines
patient diagnosis, not always taken into account in the models. For this reason, models have focused on
the development of emphysema, easily detectable by lung morphometry, and have disregarded other
components of the disease, such as airway injury or associated vascular changes.
Continuous, long-term exposure to cigarette smoke is considered the main risk factor for this disease,
justifying the fact that the cigarette smoke exposure model is the most widely used. Some variations on
this basic model, related to exposure time,the association of other inducers or inhibitors, exacerbations or
the use oftransgenic animals to facilitate the identification of pathogenic pathways have been developed.
Some variations or heterogeneity of this disease, then, can be reproduced and models can be designed
for resolving researchers’ questions on disease identification or treatment responses.