A Review of Animal Models of Intervertebral Disc Degeneration: Pathophysiology, Regeneration, and Translation to the Clinic

Table 1

Summary of animal models of disc degeneration.

Animal	Notochordal cells in adult intervertebral disc	Mechanism	References
Mouse	Present	Spontaneous
		Knockout: Col2a1 gene/type II collagen	Sahlman et al. [18]
		Collagen IX mutation	Kimura et al. [38]
		Mechanical
		Tail bending	Court et al. [39]
		Bipedal mouse	Higuchi et al. [40], Goff and Landmesser [36]
		Instability: resection of posterior elements	Miyamoto et al. [41]
Rat	Present	Spontaneous
		HLA-B27 and human β2-microglobulin gene transgenic	Hammer et al. [42]
		Mechanical
		Tail bending	Lindblom [43]
		Bipedal rat	Goff and Landmesser [36]
		Ilizarov-type apparatus	Iatridis et al. [44]
		Cyclical compression	Ching et al. [45]
		Structural
		Stab incision	Rousseau et al. [46] and Jeong et al. [47]
Sand rat	Present	Spontaneous
		Laboratory diet	Silberberg et al. [48], Gruber et al. [49], Moskowitz et al. [50]
Rabbit	Present	Mechanical
		External loading device	Kroeber et al. [51]
		Adjacent segment fusion	Phillips et al. [52]
		Structural
		Annulus puncture	Masuda et al. [20]
		Chemonucleolysis: chondroitinase ABC	Kiester et al. [53]
		NP aspiration	Sakai et al. [54]
Canine
Nonchondrodystrophoid dog	Present	Spontaneous	Bergknut et al. [21]
		Structural
		Annular injury with scalpel/drill	Keyes and Compere [55]
		Subtotal discectomy	Hohaus et al. [56]
Chondrodystrophoid dog	Absent	Spontaneous	Gillett et al. [57] and Bergknut et al. [21]
		Structural
		Needle aspiration of NP	Serigano et al. [58]
		Chemonucleolysis: chymopapain	Melrose et al. [59]
Goat	Absent	Structural
		Chondroitinase ABC	Hoogendoorn et al. [60]
		Drill bit injury/annulotomy	Zhang et al. [22]
Pig	Present	Structural
		Nucleotomy	Acosta et al. [61]
Sheep	Absent	Structural
		Partial thickness annulotomy	Osti et al. [62], Oehme et al. [63], Melrose et al. [64]
		Annular incision and partial nucleotomy (simulated microdiscectomy)	Oehme et al. [23]
		Chondroitinase ABC	Ghosh et al. [65]
Macaque	Present	Spontaneous
		Age related degeneration	Nuckley et al. [66]
Baboon	Present	Spontaneous
		Age related degeneration	Lauerman et al. [24] and Platenberg et al. [25]
Rhesus monkey	Present	Structural
		Annulotomy collagenase	Stern and Coulson [67]
		Bleomycin injection of subchondral bone	Wei et al. [68]

NP indicates nucleus pulposus.