REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Ethnopharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1636205
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating Approaches Traditional and Biomedical Therapies in Rheumatological and other Inflammatory Musculoskeletal DiseasesView all 4 articles
New progress in animal models for studying hyperuricemia
Provisionally accepted
- Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, China
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Hyperuricemia (HUA) is a prevalent metabolic disorder driven by dysregulated purine metabolism and impaired urate excretion, and robust animal models are critical for elucidating its pathophysiology and guiding therapy development. This review systematically examines chemically induced, gene-edited, environmental, exercise and microbiota-based HUA models across rodents, poultry, primates, zebrafish and silkworms, highlighting each model's strengths and limitations in mimicking human uric acid handling. We discuss how these models have validated standard urate-lowering treatments-such as xanthine oxidase inhibitors and uricosurics-and uncovered emerging therapeutic targets, including the gut-NLRP3 inflammasome axis and SIRT1-mediated ABCG2 regulation. Finally, we propose a unified three-tier framework encompassing biochemical, mechanistic and pathological criteria to standardize model evaluation and accelerate translational research in hyperuricemia.
Keywords: Hyperuricemia, Animal Models, Modeling method, gene editing, Evaluation indicators
Received: 27 May 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Li, Zhang, Fu, Ma, Zhang, Xing and Tong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ying Tong, Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, China
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