Potential Application of Hairless Guinea Pigs as a Replacement for the Yucatan Mini-pig in Animal Studies

摘要

The Yucatan mini-pig (Sus scrofa) is one of the most widely used animal models for skin damage studies because it shares many of the same physical properties as human skin. While the Yucatan is ideal for laser exposure studies using a large spot size, its size and cost are excessive for projects using smaller beams. This experiment performed histological analysis of skin biopsies from pigmented Hairless Guinea Pigs (Cavia porcellus) for epidermal thickness and melanin distribution. That data was then compared to similar information on the Yucatan.