FAWN HOODED Rat

The origin of the FAWN HOODED must always be given because characteristics will vary accordingly. It’s an outbred stock that results from crosses of other outbred rats: German Brown, Lashley albino and
Long Evans. Animals were then sent to different breeding facilities to be inbred: FH/Har (Iowa University), FHH, FHL (Erasmus University) and FH/Wjd (NY Dpt Health). JANVIER LABS’s strain is descended from the FH/Wjd bred by NRF Maier from German brown and white Lashley.

It’s described as a model for Chediak-Higashi syndrome (Meyers et al., 1982) but Penner et al. (1988) do not share the same conclusion.

A key pathology is coagulation impairment (Tschopp et al., 1972; Raymond and Dodds, 1975) because of the red-eyed dilution (r) mutation. It mainly affects platelets’ dense granules. Homozygous rats have an abnormal functioning of platelets called storage pool deficiency (Prieur and Meyers, 1984). In these animals, the platelets have a defective secretion of coagulation mediators, leading to heavy bleedings (Tschopp et al., 1972; Raymond and Dodds, 1975; Tschopp and Baumgartner, 1977; Kirchmaier et al., 1990, Magro et al., 1992).

FAWN HOODED rats exhibit hypertension leading to proteinuria and focal glomerular sclerosis. They show altered responsiveness of serotonergic mechanisms in the central nervous system, alcoholism and hypercortisolemia.

Main application and research fields