Recent advances in anxiety disorders: Focus on animal models and pathological mechanisms

Anxiety disorders have become one of the most severe psychiatric disorders, and the incidence is increasing every year. They impose an extraordinary personal and socioeconomic burden. Anxiety disorders are influenced by multiple complex and interacting genetic, psychological, social, and environmental factors, which contribute to disruption or imbalance in homeostasis and eventually cause pathologic anxiety. The selection of a suitable animal model is important for the exploration of disease etiology and pathophysiology, and the development of new drugs. Therefore, a more comprehensive understanding of the advantages and limitations of existing animal models of anxiety disorders is helpful to further study the underlying pathological mechanisms of the disease. This review summarizes animal models and the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders, and discusses the current research status to provide insights for further study of anxiety disorders. This review mainly summarizes the existing animal models and the latest progress of pathological mechanisms of anxiety disorders. In this manuscript, the advantages and disadvantages of existing animal models of anxiety and behavioral evaluation methods are discussed. Meanwhile, the recent pathological mechanisms of anxiety disorders are explored from multiple perspectives, including neuroendocrine, ion channel, endocannabinoid system, neural circuits and so on.image