Guidelines for porcine models of human bacterial infections

Abstract

During the last 10 years the number of porcine models for human bacterial infectious diseases has increased. In the future, this tendency is expected to continue and, therefore, the aim of the present review is to describe guidelines for the development and reporting of these models. The guidelines are based on a review of 122 publications of porcine models for different bacterial infectious diseases in humans. The review demonstrates a substantial lack of information in most papers which hampers reproducibility and continuation of the work that was established in the models. The guidelines describe overall principles related to the inoculum, the animal, the infected animal and the post-mortem characterization that are of crucial importance when porcine models of infectious diseases are developed, validated and reported.