A surgical mouse model of neonatal right ventricular outflow tract obstruction by pulmonary artery banding

Disease animal models play an extremely important role in preclinical research. Lack of corresponding animal models, many basic research cannot be carried out, and the conclusions obtained are incomplete or even incorrect. Right ventricular (RV) outflow tract (RVOT) obstruction leads to RV pressure overload (PO) and reduced pulmonary blood flow (RPF), which are two of the most important pathophysiological characteristics in pediatric cardiovascular diseases, and seriously affect the survival rate and long-term life quality of many children. Due to the lack of a neonatal mouse model for RVOT obstruction, it is largely unknown how RV PO and RPF regulate postnatal RV and pulmonary development. Thus, many treatment are directly applied from adults despite significant differences in cardiovascular physiology between infants and adults, with limited or even harmful results. Here we firstly introduced a neonatal mouse model of RVOT obstruction by pulmonary artery banding (PAB) on postnatal day 1. PAB induced neonatal RVOT obstruction, RV PO, and RPF. Neonatal RV PO induced cardiomyocyte proliferation, and neonatal RPF induced pulmonary dysplasia, the two features that can not be observed in adult RVOT obstruction. As a result, PAB pups exhibited overall developmental dysplasia, a sign similar to that of children with RVOT obstruction. Since many pediatric cardiovascular diseases are associated with RV PO and RPF, the introduction of neonatal mouse model of RVOT obstruction may greatly enhance our understanding of those diseases, and eventually save or improve the lives of many children. We used C57 mice in this study and divided them into sham and PAB group, each group contain 3 replicates.