医学研究中的实验动物

本文概述了实验动物的分类、特点及其在医学生物学中的应用。在医学生物学的发展过程中,实验动物的重要性已愈来愈被人们所认识。合理地选用实验动物对达到预定的实验目的起着至关重要的作用。     

Biostatistical collaboration in medical research

There has been an explosive growth in the development of statistical methodology over the past several decades. Research in both medicine and public health, in which the involvement of biostatisticians has increased dramatically during this period, has been both a beneficiary of this new methodology as well as a source of new problems. The contributions of statistical methodology in design, implementation, and analysis as they relate to the role that biostatistics and biostatisticians now play in the field of medical research are addressed. We comment on: (1) the acceptance by the medical community that biostatistical concepts are an integral part of sound medical research; (2) the sometimes unrealistic expectations placed on biostatistics and biostatisticians given limited resources and/or limited control; (3) some controversies among biostatisticians; and (4) the need for emphasizing the design and implementation phases of medical investigations.     

Methodological issues unsaid in medical research

Methodology consitutes the study of methods considered as < manners of leading its thought, of establishing or of showing truths according to certain principles and with a certain order >. We will see that medical < truths >, knowledge, could be of an extremely different nature: factual knowledge is a simple observation, often with operational vocation\; theoretical knowledge belongs to a coherent whole, it fascines and facilitates our representations of pathologies\; the causal knowledge is often the subject of extreme interrogations in medical practice\; it is of primarily metaphysical nature. These distinctions are not without consequence in methodological terms. Theories are useful because they facilitate the choice of the assumptions to be tested, the variables to be measured and the interpretation of the results of experiments. The risk however exists to be unable to think apart from their framework, and thus to neglect any source of knowledge which they could not integrate. The cause is inaccessible to science\; it will be necessary, in practice, to be limited to the search for variables of upstream on which action of prevention or cure could be undertaken. To establish, to show this medical knowledge, it is necessary to resort to the scientific method by formulating refutable assumptions by reproducible experiments, and that this process involves a belief in the found results. It appears thus that for the same experimental plan, the level of belief and thus the level of proof of the results is a function of the type of measurement carried out (commonplace measurement or of high technicality), of the medical discipline and the media character or not of studied pathology, even of stakes of being able. The medical reproducibility of experiments is problematic since results of these experiments are in general random. This results from the considerable number of variables entering in the determination of human pathologies, and that the majority of these variables are either unknown, or impossible to control. Randomisation makes it possible to give a probabilistic character to this risk: it is then possible to resort to mathematics to carry out statistical tests, to calculate confidence intervals and to profit from a possibility of making inferences with a known margin of error. In the absence of randomisation, it is possible to resort to models\; they imply however the knowledge of statistical methods, reserve, experience and a great intellectual honesty during the interpretation of the results, finally a replication of the experiments is here, more than elsewhere, essential.     

毛丝鼠在医学研究中的应用

毛丝鼠已成功用于听觉系统、微生物及寄生虫感染动物模型研究,由于其独特的生物学特点,可进一步开发以用于老年性疾病、代谢性疾病等方面研究。本文将介绍毛丝鼠的相关生物学特性,并就其在医学研究中的应用进展作简要综述。