Refinement Database

Database on Refinement of Housing, Husbandry, Care, and Use of Animals in Research

This database, created in 2000, is updated every four months with newly published scientific articles, books, and other publications related to improving or safeguarding the welfare of animals used in research.

Tips for using the database:

  • This landing page displays all of the publications in the database.
  • Use the drop-down menus to filter these publications by Animal Type, Setting, and/or Topic.
  • Clicking on a parent category (e.g., Rodent) will include publications relating to all the items in that category (e.g., Chinchilla, Gerbil, Guinea Pig, etc.).
  • You may also add a keyword to further narrow your search.
  • Please note that at this time, only publications dated 2010 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Animal Type and Topic, and only publications dated 2020 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Setting. Most publications older than 2010 can only be searched by keyword. 
Robinson, L. M., Weiss, A. (Eds.) 2023. Nonhuman Primate Welfare: From History, Science, and Ethics to Practice. Springer, Cham, Switzerland. 671 p.

This volume reviews the broad topic of welfare in nonhuman primates under human care. Chapters detail the history of primates in captivity, ethical and legal issues surrounding the use of nonhuman primates as entertainment or...

Herlofson, E. A. G., Tavola, F., Engdahl, K. S. et al. 2023. Evaluation of primary wound healing and potential complications after perioperative infiltration with lidocaine without adrenaline in surgical incisions in dogs and cats. Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica 65(1), 21.

Pre-emptive local analgesia with the use of lidocaine is practised increasingly in veterinary medicine as part of applied multimodal analgesia, despite its controversial impact on wound healing. The purpose of this prospective, randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled...

Trujanovic, R., Rohrbach, H. 2023. Ultrasound-guided block of the sciatic and the femoral nerves in rabbits—A descriptive anatomical study. Animals 13(14), 2393.

The rabbit is a popular animal model for human biomechanical research involving surgery on the hind limb. Mortality is higher in rabbits when undergoing general anesthesia compared to dogs and cats. Moreover, due to their...

Miller, A. L., Clarkson, J. M., Quigley, C. et al. 2022. Evaluating pain and analgesia effectiveness following routine castration in rabbits using behavior and facial expressions. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 782486.

Prevention of pain in rabbits is a priority for both welfare and validity of scientific data. We aimed to determine if the rabbit grimace scale (RbtGS) could be used as a viable, rapid assessment tool...

Paterson, E. A., Turner, P. V. 2022. Challenges with assessing and treating pain in research primates: A focused survey and literature review. Animals 12(17), 2304.

Research primates may undergo surgical procedures making effective pain management essential to ensure good animal welfare and unbiased scientific data. Adequate pain mitigation is dependent on whether veterinarians, technicians, researchers, and caregivers can recognize and...

Windsor, P. A. 2022. Role of topical anaesthesia in pain management of farm animals, a changing paradigm. Animals 12(18), 2459.

Field evidence indicates that livestock producers are motivated by access to products that readily deliver pain management during husbandry interventions and, more recently, viral epidermal infectious diseases, including FMD. There has been impressive adoption in...

Svartberg, K. 2022. A possible basis for personality in dogs: Individual differences in affective predispositions. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 255, 105740.

Previously, dog personality traits that seem to correspond have been identified by the Dog Mentality Assessment (DMA) and the Behaviour and Personality Assessment in Dogs (BPH): Playfulness, Sociability, Curiosity/fearlessness (DMA) vs. Non-social fearfulness (BPH), Aggressiveness...

Espadas-González, L., Usón-Casaús, J. M., Pastor-Sirvent, N. et al. 2022. Evaluation of the two-point ultrasound-guided transversus abdominis plane block for laparoscopic canine ovariectomy. Animals 12(24), 3556.

The transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block causes desensitization of the abdominal wall and peritoneum. Of all the approaches proposed to perform it, the two-injection-point TAP showed the best results in terms of the area reached...

Robinson, L. M., Waran, N. K., Handel, I. et al. 2021. Happiness, welfare, and personality in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Applied Animal Behaviour Science 236, 105268.

When we treat an animal’s welfare as an individual experience, we should consider the possibility that it may be associated with individual differences in personality. We tested for such associations in 44 socially housed rhesus...

Pomerantz, O., Capitanio, J. P. 2021. Temperament predicts the quality of social interactions in captive female rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Animals 11(8), 2452.

Previous reports suggest that female macaques with greater similarity in emotionality and nervous temperament, as evaluated in a well-established BioBehavioral Assessment (BBA) at the California National Primate Research Center, were more likely to form successful...

Zemanova, M. A. 2021. Noninvasive genetic assessment is an effective wildlife research tool when compared with other approaches. Genes 12(11), 1672.

Wildlife research has been indispensable for increasing our insight into ecosystem functioning as well as for designing effective conservation measures under the currently high rates of biodiversity loss. Genetic and genomic analyses might be able...

Ajuda, I., Battini, M., Mattiello, S. et al. 2020. Evaluation of pain mitigation strategies in goat kids after cautery disbudding. Animals 10(2), 277.

Nowadays, most of the goat milk production in developed countries is done in intensive indoors production systems. In these systems, procedures such as disbudding are performed routinely. Disbudding is done in young goat kids and...

Hempstead, M. N., Waas, J. R., Stewart, M. et al. 2020. Goat kids are not small calves: Species comparisons in relation to disbudding. Animal Welfare 29(3), 293-312.

Limited scientific literature is available for developing 'best practices' guidelines for the management of dairy goats (Caprus hircus), particularly goat kids. Disbudding practices for kids and calves appear to be similar, however, it is important...

Hempstead, M. N., Waas, J. R., Stewart, M. et al. 2020. Can isoflurane and meloxicam mitigate pain associated with cautery disbudding of 3-week-old goat kids? Animals 10(5), 878.

We evaluated the effect of pain mitigation strategies (isoflurane and meloxicam) on the behaviour and physiology of 3-week-old disbudded goat kids. Fifty Saanen does (mean ± SD, 21 ± 3 days old) were randomly allocated...

Bessa Ferreira, V. H., De Paiva Fonseca, E., Chagas, Correia Santos Das, A. C. et al. 2020. Personality traits modulate stress responses after enclosure change of captive capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus). Applied Animal Behaviour Science 232, 105111.

Husbandry procedures may cause behavioral and physiological changes to animals living in captivity. However, an individual’s reaction is not uniform and may be related to different coping strategies. In this study, we analyzed whether and...

Frahm, S., Di Giminiani, P., Stanitznig, A. et al. 2020. Nociceptive threshold of calves and goat kids undergoing injection of clove oil or isoeugenol for disbudding. Animals 10(7), 1228.

In this preliminary study, we compared changes in mechanical nociceptive thresholds (MNT) of calves and goat kids injected with clove oil or isoeugenol under the horn bud as a potential, more welfare-friendly alternative to hot-iron...

Andrews, D. D., Fajt, V. R., Baker, K. C. et al. 2020. A comparison of buprenorphine, sustained release buprenorphine, and high concentration buprenorphine in male New Zealand white rabbits. JAALAS 59(5), 546-556.

Pain management in rabbits can be difficult because they are adept at hiding pain and can be stressed by handling and restraint for injection. The use of opioid analgesics with prolonged durations of activity could...

Raillard, M., Detotto, C., Grepper, S. et al. 2019. Anaesthetic and perioperative management of 14 male New Zealand white rabbits for calvarial bone surgery. Animals 9(11), 896.

Calvarial bone surgery on rabbits is frequently performed. This report aims to document a simple and practical anaesthetic and perioperative management for this procedure. Fourteen male New Zealand white rabbits were included in the study...

Finkemeier, M.-A., Oesterwind, S., Nürnberg, G. et al. 2019. Assessment of personality types in Nigerian dwarf goats (Capra hircus) and cross-context correlations to behavioural and physiological responses. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 217, 28-35.

The assessment of personality in farm animals and its relation to other behavioural and physiological traits is of growing scientific and practical interest. Therefore, the aims of the present study were first to assess the...

Stevens, C., Hawkins, P., Lovell-Badge, R. et al. 2019. Report of the 2018 RSPCA/UFAW Rodent and Rabbit Welfare Group meeting. Animal Technology and Welfare 18(2), 81-91.

The RSPCA/UFAW Rodent (and now Rabbit) Working Group has held a one-day meeting every autumn for the last 25 years, so that its members can discuss current welfare research, exchange views on welfare issues and...

Costa, J. H. C., Cantor, M. C., Adderley, N. A. et al. 2019. Key animal welfare issues in commercially raised dairy calves: social environment, nutrition, and painful procedures. Canadian Journal of Animal Science 99(4), 649-660.

Dairy calf welfare concerns are growing and new evidence suggests that the early life environment influences appropriate physical, behavioral, and cognitive development lasting into adulthood. This review highlights key evidence for the impacts of housing...

Smith, A. A., Halliday, L. C., Lindeblad, M. O. et al. 2019. Evaluation of analgesic patches in cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fascicularis). JAALAS 58(3), 356-361.

Opioids are widely used in veterinary and human medicine to manage pain. However, there is a paucity of information in the literature regarding the pharmacokinetics of opioid transdermal patches (TDP) in NHP. Therefore, to determine...

Lucrezia Costa, G., Nastasi, B., Spadola, F. et al. 2019. Effect of levobupivacaine, administered intraperitoneally, on physiological variables and on intrasurgery and postsurgery pain in dogs undergoing ovariohysterectomy. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 30, 33-36.

The aim of this study was to evaluate intraoperative and postoperative efficacy and cardiovascular effects of levobupivacaine compared with bupivacaine, administered intraperitoneally in dogs undergoing ovariohysterectomy surgery. Thirty female dogs were divided into three groups...

Gottlieb, D. H., Del Rosso, L, Sheikhi, F. et al. 2018. Personality, environmental stressors, and diarrhea in Rhesus macaques: An interactionist perspective. American Journal of Primatology 80(12), e22908.

Previous research has repeatedly shown both personality and psychological stress to predict gastrointestinal disorders and chronic diarrhea in humans. The goal of the present research was to evaluate the role of personality, as well as...

Linden, J.B., Capitanio, J.P., McCowan, B. et al. 2018. Coping style and cortisol levels in infancy predict hair cortisol following new group formation in captive rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). American Journal of Primatology 80(12), e22938.

Social instability in primate groups has been used as a model to understand how social stress affects human populations. While it is well established that individual cercopithecines have different temperaments or personalities, little is known...