Abstract
Atopic dermatitis (AD) is one of the most common and severe skin diseases, and is primarily a disease of infancy and childhood. Although a number of mouse models for human AD have been developed, they all have significant disadvantage, such as a different timing of onset and remission from human AD. We generated transgenic (Tg) rats overexpressing telomerase in ubiquitous tissues. The Tg rats developed skin lesions that are in accordance with those of human AD, and this Tg rats was named ‘Inaba’. Clinical signs and symptoms seen in Tg rats began at 2 weeks of age with superficial erosion and deep excoriation followed by itching, erythema, hemorrhage, edema, scaling and dryness of the skin. Their skin lesion was begun to improve by 8 weeks of age. The Inaba rats showed elevated serum IgE. The histopathological examination of dorsal skin of Inaba rat revealed significant histologic changes, including hyperkerathosis, acanthosis, parakerathosis, telangiectasia, spongiosis, and infiltration of inflammatory cells were observed. Thus, we consider that Inaba rat is a useful model to investigate the pathogenesis of AD especially appeared in infancy to childhood, and to develop a new generation of therapeutic strategies for the intervention of allergic diseases.
