Characterization of the spontaneous degenerative mitral valve disease in FVB mice.

Background: The development of new non-surgical treatments dedicated to mitral valve degeneration is limited by the absence of relevant spontaneous and rapidly progressing animal experimental models.

Animals: We characterized the spontaneous mitral valve degeneration in two inbred FVB mouse strains compared to C57BL/6J and investigated a contribution of the serotonergic system.

Methods: Males and females FVB/NJ and FVB/NRj were compared to the putative C57BL/6J control at 12, 16, 20 and 24 weeks of age.