Mus musculus is the most experimented-on creature. The most of modern pharmaceutical treatment or basic understanding of disease has involved working on a mouse. This is because they’re the smallest and easiest mammals to study in a laboratory setting – they breed quickly and are good enough for many types of study and share over 90% of their genes with humans. Also, the main biological body systems work in the same way with very similar structure and function.
However, using a mouse can never tell scientists everything they need to now. They have to replicate it in a higher animal, like a monkey, pushes it closer to becoming a reality for people. For example, an anti-ageing pill extended the mice’s life by up to 38%, but in humans this drug suppresses immunity.
When researching whether a drug works, doses on mice are sometimes higher that a safely dose for a patient, even allowing for adjustment of metabolic rate and size. In mice, the scientist objective is demonstrate an effective treatment and not always tries to make a significant reduction to test for safety before could consider upping the dose and evaluated the side-effects.
Nevertheless, 26 Nobel prizes have gone to discoveries where research on mice, including the discovery of penicillin and understanding the viruses’ roll. As well, mice useful in understanding how genes work and why they might go wrong. A recent advance, found that when two genes mutated in mice, caused autism-like symptoms affecting brain growth and sociability and this can explain the genetic human autism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/04/medical-experiments-on-mice
In memory of “Martina”
No comments:
Post a Comment