Intravenous arachidonate-induced respiratory distress: comparative study of three in vivo models for the measurement of antithrombotic activity.

Three different in vivo methods for the study of antithrombotic drugs have been compared. A syndrome of acute respiratory distress has been induced by intravenous injection of arachidonate in three different animal species: mouse, rabbit, and hamster. The intensity of the induced stress was quantified by different procedures: visual observation in the mouse, death or survival in the rabbit, and mechanical recording of the respiration in the hamster. The protective effect of a new antithrombotic agent, triflusal, a salicylic acid derivative, was studied. At the doses used, triflusal has no effect on the respiratory center activity of control animals. The results show that a new method using a mechanical device to record the intensity and duration of the respiratory distress in hamsters is the most suitable of the three methods studied.