Mimicking Metabolic Disturbance in Establishing Animal Models of Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction

Heart failure (HF), the terminal state of different heart diseases, imposed a significant health care burden worldwide. It is the last battlefield in dealing with cardiovascular diseases. HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a type of HF in which the symptoms and signs of HF are mainly ascribed to diastolic dysfunction of left ventricle, whereas systolic function is normal or near-normal. Compared to HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), the diagnosis and treatment of HFpEF have made limited progress, partly due to the lack of suitable animal models for translational studies in the past. Given metabolic disturbance and inflammatory burden contribute to HFpEF pathogenesis, recent years have witnessed emerging studies focusing on construction of animal models with HFpEF phenotype by mimicking metabolic disorders. These models prefer to recapitulate the metabolic disorders and endothelial dysfunction, leading to the more detailed understanding of the entity. In this review, we summarize the currently available animal models of HFpEF with metabolic disorders, as well as their advantages and disadvantages as tools for translational studies.