**7. Challenges and outlooks**

During the past decades, significant progresses to diagnose and treat the Brucellar spondylodiscitis have been achieved [66–69]. However, many obstacles still exist to be overcome in order to employ and utilize new strategies to refine early detection, diagnosis, therapy [70, 71]. Regarding the basic research, no appropriate vaccines exist due to an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms of human Brucellosis, including Brucellar spondylodiscitis. Clinically, the early and differential diagnosis of the Brucellar spondylodiscitis is challenging, especially in the early phases of the disease. Also, pharmacotherapy is the main clinical therapeutic modality for Brucellar spondylodiscitis and should be individually tailored; however, medication selection, administration, dosage, and duration are still largely debatable.

The ideal preclinical models should reflect the precise clinical characteristics of the human Brucellar spondylodiscitis and serve as a platform to explore the potential vaccines, examine novel diagnostic methods, and preselect innovative therapeutics [72–74]. More investigations in the future are still required to determine the optimal clinically relevant large preclinical model, to identify the efficacy-associated factors (e.g. age, joint size, gender, and dosage), to compare possible dissimilarities between models with local contained lesions or systematic spreading.
