标题：Metabolic and cardiovascular disorders in highly inbred pig lines used for intensive farming: how animal welfare evaluation could improve the basic knowledge of human obesity
摘要：Intensive pig farming is currently performed with highly inbred lines of animals characterised
not only by fast growing and low proportion of back-fat tissue, but also by an impaired development of muscular
mass and cardiocirculatory system, and higher susceptibility to oxidative stress. This picture of geneticallydetermined
metabolic alterations suggests the use of these lines as a nice tool for conducting comparative studies
with human populations affected by high incidence of obesity and their sequelae, e.g. type 2 diabetes, arteriosclerosis,
and cardiovascular diseases. The animal model offers, in fact, the advantages of low genetic variance,
homogeneous feeding regime, and the absence of confounding factors typical of humans, such as smoking, alcohol
drinking, etc. The similarity of pathological response to high caloric intakes between the two species supports the
use of pig model for identifying genes and their variants associated with energy storage defects through the
activation of both hormonal and biochemical pathways. To this purpose, the evaluation of animal welfare
constitutes a nice opportunity to deepen the matter, through the evaluation of both ethical and physiological needs.
