The benefit of animal models for autoimmune hepatitis.

Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is a chronic liver disease which is normally recognized during late stage of the disease. Due to limited knowledge about the onset and course of disease and need for chronic immunosuppression with significant side-effects there is a requirement for a good preclinical animal model, mirroring main characteristics of AIH. In addition to the exclusion of other liver diseases, AIH is characterized by elevated serum transaminases, specific autoantibodies and elevated gammaglobulins as well as a specific liver histopathology. A good preclinical model should mirror most of these criteria. In the last decades several models have been published using different approaches to break hepatic tolerance and induce liver damage. The induction of a chronic hepatitis similar to the human disease remained a difficult challenge. Nevertheless, these models helped to get more information about the aspects of AIH induction and liver immunology.