Animal Models in Cardiovascular Research - 3rd Edition by David Gross (Hardcover)

About the Book

This fully revised and updated third edition reflects intensified interest in the field and provides information essential to researchers interested in using animal models for cardiovascular research, or any research requiring normal cardiovascular function.

Book Synopsis

Interest in the humane and scientifically justifiable use of research animals has intensified since the publication of the 2nd edition of Animal Models in Cardiovascular Research. This completely revised and updated edition will provide information essential to any researcher interested in using animal models for cardiovascular research, or any research which requires normal cardiovascular function. The format and presentation will be changed to make the text more easy to read and use: (1) This edition is in outline format, for ease and utility. (2) The opening chapter includes more information on the cardiovascular effects of post-operative analgesia and will address the recognition of pain behavior in species commonly used in research settings, particularly rats and mice. (3) New edition includes reference material more useful to researchers using transgenic and naturally occurring animal models to dissect these mechanisms.

From the Back Cover

Animal Models in Cardiovascular Research covers both historical and recent advances in our understanding of the cardiovascular system from studies conducted in animal models. The last decade has seen an explosion in the use of very specialized congenic and transgenic animal models that were not described in the previous two editions. The results of many of these studies provide a sometime bewildering array of redundant, overlapping and competing molecular pathways demanding further study. This third edition is designed to provide a better basis for understanding and using animal models in the current climate of background knowledge and information.

The first and second editions of Animal Models in Cardiovascular Research emphasized normal cardiovascular parameters and the cardiovascular effects of a wide variety of drugs commonly used for restraint, anesthesia and pain control in the various animal species. The third edition is focused on the avalanche of genetic, molecular and protein-based information generated from the use of both congenic and transgenic animal models. Updated and expanded chapters provide new information generated from classical, congenic and transgenic animal models used to study ischemic heart disease, cardiomyopathy, heart failure, hypertension and atherosclerotic disease.

Completely new chapters in this third edition describe the techniques, problems and pitfalls associated with the measurement of cardiac and vascular function and ventricular/arterial coupling dynamics in various animal models. There is a new chapter detailing problems and pitfalls associated with isolated heart preparations and another describing animal models for the study of neurohumeral and CNS control of the cardiovascular system.

About the Author

Dr. David R. Gross entered private veterinary practice after earning the DVM degree from Colorado State University in 1960. In 1974 he was awarded the PhD degree in physiology from the Ohio State University beginning a 36-year career in academics that culminated as professor and head of the Department of Veterinary Biosciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Gross' research career encompassed 58 funded projects totaling over $5.5 million and 91 papers published in refereed journals using a wide variety of animal models. Ironically his three most-cited research papers received no external funding. He and his colleagues showed that feeding dietary cholesterol to rabbits induced Alzheimer's-like lesions in the brain. Their work also showed that surgery involving cardiopulmonary bypass resulted in Alzheimer's-like brain lesions in pigs. With another group of colleagues he helped pioneer minimally invasive coronary artery bypass grafting techniques using the pig as a model.