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. 
Xie, W., Kordt, M., Palme, R. et al. 2021. Diagnostic ability of methods depicting distress of tumor-bearing mice. Animals 11(8), 2155.

Subcutaneous tumor models in mice are the most commonly used experimental animal models in cancer research. To improve animal welfare and the quality of scientific studies, the distress of experimental animals needs to be minimized...

Brajon, S., Morello, G. M., Capas-Peneda, S. et al. 2021. All the pups we cannot see: Cannibalism masks perinatal death in laboratory mouse breeding but infanticide is rare. Animals 11(8), 2327.

Perinatal mortality is a major issue in laboratory mouse breeding. We compared a counting method using daily checks (DAILY_CHECK) with a method combining daily checks with detailed video analyses to detect cannibalisms (VIDEO_TRACK) for estimating...

Kolarevic, J., Calduch-Giner, J., Espmark, Å. M. et al. 2021. A novel miniaturized biosensor for monitoring Atlantic salmon swimming activity and respiratory frequency. Animals 11(8), 2403.

The advanced development of sensor technologies has led to the emergence of fish biosensors that are currently used for research and commercial purposes. AEFishBIT is a miniaturized biosensor attached to fish operculum that measures physical...

Travain, T., Valsecchi, P. 2021. Infrared thermography in the study of animals’ emotional responses: A critical review. Animals 11(9), 2510.

Whether animals have emotions was historically a long-lasting question but, today, nobody disputes that they do. However, how to assess them and how to guarantee animals their welfare have become important research topics in the...

Segura-Göthlin, S., Fernández, A., Arbelo, M. et al. 2021. The validation of a non-invasive skin sampling device for detecting cetacean Poxvirus. Animals 11(10), 2814.

Poxvirus-like lesions are widely used as a potential health indicator in cetaceans, although for this application, corroboration of Poxvirus skin disease is imperative. Aiming to address skin biopsies intrusiveness, a preliminary investigation of a non-invasive...

Libera, K., Konieczny, K., Grabska, J. et al. 2021. Potential novel biomarkers for mastitis diagnosis in sheep. Animals 11(10), 2783.

This review aims to characterize promising novel markers of ovine mastitis. Mastitis is considered as one of the primary factors for premature culling in dairy sheep and has noticeable financial, productional, and animal welfare-related implications...

Wang, G., Muhammad, A., Liu, C. et al. 2021. Automatic recognition of fish behavior with a fusion of RGB and optical flow data based on deep learning. Animals 11(10), 2774.

The rapid and precise recognition of fish behavior is critical in perceiving health and welfare by allowing farmers to make informed management decisions on recirculating aquaculture systems while reducing labor. The conventional recognition methods are...

Zufferey, R., Minnig, A., Thomann, B. et al. 2021. Animal-based indicators for on-farm welfare assessment in sheep. Animals 11(10), 2973.

The value society assigns to animal welfare in agricultural productions is increasing, resulting in ever-enhancing methods to assess the well-being of farm animals. The aim of this study was to review the scientific literature to...

Diana, A., Salas, M., Pereboom, Z. et al. 2021. A systematic review of the use of technology to monitor welfare in zoo animals: Is there space for improvement? Animals 11(11), 3048.

A top priority of modern zoos is to ensure good animal welfare (AW), thus, efforts towards improving AW monitoring are increasing. Welfare assessments are performed through more traditional approaches by employing direct observations and time-consuming...

Miller, L. J., Lauderdale, L. K., Bryant, J. L. et al. 2021. Behavioral diversity as a potential positive indicator of animal welfare in bottlenose dolphins. PLOS ONE 16(8), e0253113.

Accredited zoological facilities are committed to fully understanding the behavioral, mental, and physical needs of each species to continuously improve the welfare of the animals under their professional care and detect when welfare has diminished...

Winn, C. B., Hwang, S. K., Morin, J. et al. 2021. Automated monitoring of respiratory rate as a novel humane endpoint: A refinement in mouse metastatic lung cancer models. PLOS ONE 16(9), e0257694.

In oncology research, while xenograft tumor models are easily visualized and humane endpoints can be clearly defined, metastatic tumor models are often based on more subjective clinical observations as endpoints. This study aimed at identifying...

Probert, R., Bastian, A., Elwen, S. H. et al. 2021. Vocal correlates of arousal in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops spp.) in human care. PLOS ONE 16(9), e0250913.

Human-controlled regimes can entrain behavioural responses and may impact animal welfare. Therefore, understanding the influence of schedules on animal behaviour can be a valuable tool to improve welfare, however information on behaviour overnight and in...

Grims, C., Jacobson, C., Hedenqvist, P. 2021. Are female mice dehydrated during peak lactation? Effect of water and gel supplement on hydration parameters and water consumption in two strains of mice. Scandinavian Journal of Laboratory Animal Science 47(3), 16-24.

Mice (Mus musculus) have a high basal rate of metabolism which increases during pregnancy and lactation. During peak lactation, water intake amounts to up to 65 % of the bodyweight per day. Providing water in...

Sabrautzki, S., Miller, M., Kague, E. et al. 2021. Welfare assessment of adult laboratory zebrafish: A practical guide. Zebrafish 18(4), 282-292.

Teleost fish such as Danio rerio (zebrafish) have been successfully used in biomedical research since decades. Genetically altered fish lines obtained by state-of-the-art genetic technologies are serving as well-known model organisms. In Europe, following Directive...

Miller, A. L., Roughan, J. V. 2021. Welfare assessment, end-point refinement and the effects of non-aversive handling in C57BL/6 mice with Lewis lung cancer. Animals 12(1), 23.

Cancer-bearing mice are at risk of developing anxiety, pain, or malaise. These conditions may not only harm welfare but could also undermine data quality and translational validity in studies to develop therapeutic interventions. We aimed...

Weegh, N., Zentrich, E., Zechner, D. et al. 2021. Voluntary wheel running behaviour as a tool to assess the severity in a mouse pancreatic cancer model. PLOS ONE 16(12), e0261662.

Laboratory animals frequently undergo routine experimental procedures such as handling, restraining and injections. However, as a known source of stress, these procedures potentially impact study outcome and data quality. In the present study, we, therefore...

Verjat, A., Devienne, P., Rödel, H. G. et al. 2021. More exploratory house mice judge an ambiguous situation more negatively. Animal Cognition 24(1), 53–64.

Exploration tendency, one of the most investigated animal personality traits, may be driven by either positive (when seeking interesting information) or negative (to reduce the uncertainty of the environment) affective/emotional profiles. To disentangle the valence...

Harvey, A., Beausoleil, N., Ramp, D. et al. 2020. A ten-stage protocol for assessing the welfare of individual non-captive wild animals: Free-roaming horses (Equus ferus caballus) as an example. Animals 10(1), 148.

Knowledge of the welfare status of wild animals is vital for informing debates about the ways in which we interact with wild animals and their habitats. Currently, there is no published information about how to...

Serres, A., Hao, Y., Wang, D. 2020. Swimming features in captive odontocetes: Indicative of animals’ emotional state? Behavioural Processes 170, 103998.

Captive welfare studies in odontocete species have been mostly conducted on bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) while the welfare of many other species’ -including endangered species- remains poorly studied. More research is needed to find and...

Mallien, A. S., Häger, C., Palme, R. et al. 2020. Systematic analysis of severity in a widely used cognitive depression model for mice. Laboratory Animals 54(1), 40–49.

Animal models in psychiatric research are indispensable for insights into mechanisms of behaviour and mental disorders. Distress is an important aetiological factor in psychiatric diseases, especially depression, and is often used to mimic the human...

Weegh, N., Füner, J., Janke, O. et al. 2020. Wheel running behaviour in group-housed female mice indicates disturbed wellbeing due to DSS colitis. Laboratory Animals 54(1), 63–72.

Voluntary wheel running (VWR) behaviour is a sensitive indicator of disturbed wellbeing and used for the assessment of individual experimental severity levels in laboratory mice. However, monitoring individual VWR performance usually requires single housing, which...

Jirkof, P., Abdelrahman, A., Bleich, A. et al. 2020. A safe bet? Inter-laboratory variability in behaviour-based severity assessment. Laboratory Animals 54(1), 73–82.

Evidence-based severity assessment is essential as a basis for ethical evaluation in animal experimentation to ensure animal welfare, legal compliance and scientific quality. To fulfil these tasks scientists, animal care and veterinary personnel need assessment...

Ernst, L., Kopaczka, M., Schulz, M. et al. 2020. Improvement of the Mouse Grimace Scale set-up for implementing a semi-automated Mouse Grimace Scale scoring (Part 1). Laboratory Animals 54(1), 83–91.

The Mouse Grimace Scale (MGS) has been widely used for the noninvasive examination of distress/pain in mice. The aim of this study was to further improve its performance to generate repeatable, faster, blinded and reliable...

Ernst, L., Kopaczka, M., Schulz, M. et al. 2020. Semi-automated generation of pictures for the Mouse Grimace Scale: A multi-laboratory analysis (Part 2). Laboratory Animals 54(1), 92–98.

The Mouse Grimace Scale (MGS) is an established method for estimating pain in mice during animal studies. Recently, an improved and standardized MGS set-up and an algorithm for automated and blinded output of images for...

Chartier, L. C., Hebart, M. L., Howarth, G. S. et al. 2020. Affective state determination in a mouse model of colitis-associated colorectal cancer. PLOS ONE 15(1), e0228413.

Behavioural indicators of affective state, including burrowing, clinical scores and the Mouse Grimace Score have not yet been validated in mouse models of chronic gastrointestinal disease. Additionally, a comparison of these methods has not been...