Translational Value of Animal Models of Alcohol Addiction

Abstract

Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) account for 4% of the global death rate and 4% to 5% of disability-adjusted life-years in worldwide as the main cause of psychiatric and medical morbidity. Because of ethical concerns and trial problems of alcohol addiction in human studies, a substantial portion of work has used non-human animals as experimental models for the subject of alcohol dependence and intoxication. Animal models are usually used for the study of alcohol addiction development and test new treatments before it is applied to humans. Alcohol addiction models must, therefore, provide insights into human psychological, neurobiological, and etiological mechanisms of pathology. Types of animals for the use and dependence of alcohol, including alcohol tolerance, alcohol-seeking behaviour, and physical alcohol dependency, have been developed. Moreover, ten papers were used to investigate the current animal model’s behaviour in alcohol intake, and then verify their validity. This study aims to discuss the capacity of the current animal models of alcohol addiction to providing good validity and then describe different animal models that have been developed to study many aspects of alcohol addiction. Besides, it will be testing the validity of the behavioural approaches of animal models that support alcohol abstinence. This study also aimed to investigate variations in the behaviour of animal models and their correlation with voluntary alcohol intake and subsequent reaction to naltrexone in voluntary alcohol consumption