Current research in animal models of dry age-related macular degeneration

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of the irreversible vision loss in population over 55 years of age. With the increasingly serious problem of aging, the prevalence of AMD is rising year by year. However, as the pathogenesis of dry AMD is largely unknown, the effective therapy still is lack. Given that there was a lack of proper animal models, it brought about obstacles to researches about molecular mechanism underlying dry AMD. Nowadays, lots of murine models of dry AMD have been established and developed, which provide suitable tools for relevant researches. But, different dry AMD models show varied pathogenesis features, and a reasonable choice of models is very important for different studies. The characteristics of different dry models were reviewed in this article.