Research article

An extensive phenotypic characterization of the hTNFα transgenic mice

Michael D Hayward^* , Beverly K Jones^* , Arman Saparov , Heather S Hain , Anne-Cecile Trillat , Michelle M Bunzel , Aaron Corona , Bifang Li-Wang , Bryan Strenkowski , Caroline Giordano , Hai Shen , Emily Arcamone , Jeffrey Weidlick , Maria Vilensky , Marina Tugusheva , Roland H Felkner , William Campbell , Yu Rao , David S Grass and Olesia Buiakova

Caliper Discovery Alliances & Services (Xenogen Biosciences), 5 Cedar Brook Drive, Cranbury, NJ 08512, USA

author email corresponding author email* Contributed equally

BMC Physiology 2007, 7:13doi:10.1186/1472-6793-7-13

Published:	10 December 2007

Abstract

Background

Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) is implicated in a wide variety of pathological and physiological processes, including chronic inflammatory conditions, coronary artery disease, diabetes, obesity, and cachexia. Transgenic mice expressing human TNFα (hTNFα) have previously been described as a model for progressive rheumatoid arthritis. In this report, we describe extensive characterization of an hTNFα transgenic mouse line.

Results

In addition to arthritis, these hTNFα transgenic mice demonstrated major alterations in body composition, metabolic rate, leptin levels, response to a high-fat diet, bone mineral density and content, impaired fertility and male sexual function. Many phenotypes displayed an earlier onset and a higher degree of severity in males, pointing towards a significant degree of sexual dimorphism in response to deregulated expression of TNFα.

Conclusion

These results highlight the potential usefulness of this transgenic model as a resource for studying the progressive effects of constitutively expressed low levels of circulating TNFα, a condition mimicking that observed in a number of human pathological conditions.