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Home / Comparative Medicine, Volume 65, Number 2

Open Access Practical Murine Hematopathology: A Comparative Review and Implications for Research

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Hematologic parameters are important markers of disease in human and veterinary medicine. Biomedical research has benefited from mouse models that recapitulate such disease, thus expanding knowledge of pathogenetic mechanisms and investigative therapies that translate across species. Mice in health have many notable hematologic differences from humans and other veterinary species, including smaller erythrocytes, higher percentage of circulating reticulocytes or polychromasia, lower peripheral blood neutrophil and higher peripheral blood and bone marrow lymphocyte percentages, variable leukocyte morphologies, physiologic splenic hematopoiesis and iron storage, and more numerous and shorter-lived erythrocytes and platelets. For accurate and complete hematologic analyses of disease and response to investigative therapeutic interventions, these differences and the unique features of murine hematopathology must be understood. Here we review murine hematology and hematopathology for practical application to translational investigation.

Document Type: Research Article

Affiliations: 1: Department of Comparative Pathology, New England Primate Research Center, Harvard Medical School, Southboro, Massachusetts, USA 2: Center for Comparative Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 3: Center for Comparative Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Public Health and Professional Degree Program, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 4: Center for Comparative Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 5: Program in Anemia Signaling Research, Nephrology Division, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Program in Membrane Biology, Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, Cellular and Translational Immunology, EMD Serono Research and Development Institute, Billerica, Massachusetts, USA 6: Department of Molecular Biology, Center for Human Genetic Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Department of Cell Biology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, USA 7: Molecular Neurogenetics Unit, Center for Human Genetic Research, Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Biogen Idec, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 8: Department of Molecular Biology, Center for Human Genetic Research, Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 9: Center for Comparative Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. [email protected]

Publication date: 01 April 2015

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  • Comparative Medicine (CM), an international journal of comparative and experimental medicine, is the leading English-language publication in the field and is ranked by the Science Citation Index in the upper third of all scientific journals. The mission of CM is to disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed information that expands biomedical knowledge and promotes human and animal health through the study of laboratory animal disease, animal models of disease, and basic biologic mechanisms related to disease in people and animals.

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