Cognitive disorders related to immune dysfunction: Novel animal models for drug development

With the recent emphasis on drug development for mental disorders of late life, a need has arisen for animal models useful in preclinical evaluation of potential treatment strategies. Although the animal models now available exhibit behavioral and neurological commonalities with their target clinical syndromes, few models incorporate etiologic similarities. A review of the literature is presented relating immune factors to aging‐associated cognitive disorders, and parallels are drawn to immune factors and related behavioral impairments in autoimmune New Zealand black and nonautoimmune C57BL/6 mice. These mouse strains are proposed as potentially useful immunologic models for both theoretical investigation and drug development.