Experimental Models of Thrombocytopenia in Laboratory Animals and their Application in Identifying the Complications of Chemotherapy Drugs

Thrombocytopenia is one of the complications of chemotherapy drugs that may cause death. Different animal models of thrombocytopenia are used for clinical research and identification of its causes, each with advantages and disadvantages. The aim of this review article is to investigate the methods of thrombocytopenia induction in laboratory animals and their advantages and disadvantages.
This systematic review was conducted using the keywords “thrombocytopenia platelet”, “chemotherapy”, “animal model”, in PubMed, Science Direct and Scopus databases from 1990 until October 2017. The title and abstract of several articles were reviewed, and after excluding the unrelated items, final articles were selected and reviewed.
FINDINGS: Animal models of thrombocytopenia are of two types of immune and non-immune. Non-immune models reduce platelet production through bone marrow suppression. Antiplatelet antibodies are used in immune models. The immune and non-immune thrombocytopenic models have some advantages and limitations and are selected according to the current therapeutic goals. Mice and rats are commonly used as laboratory animals, and cyclophosphamide and carboplatin are the most commonly used drugs.
According to the results of this study, due to the limitations of human subject research in diseases that lead to thrombocytopenia, there is a need to develop appropriate animal models for studying and identifying the factors affecting thrombocytopenia.