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. 
Windsor, Z. 2021. Refinements in head plate mouse nesting: Using composite nests to enhance welfare. Animal Technology and Welfare 20(2), 135-141.

When given the opportunity, mice will choose to build nests using multiple different materials. Studies indicate that providing mice with choices which mimic the natural environment allows laboratory mice to build the best quality nests...

Burn, C. C., Popat, R. 2021. A tunnel is not enough: Mice benefit from in-cage provision of a communal shelter as well as a handling tunnel. Animal Technology and Welfare 20(3), 203-210.

Mouse shelters can provide mice with security, help them thermoregulate, offer darkness to prevent damage to their eyes and enable climbing and gnawing opportunities. For laboratory mice, there is a vast array of commercially available...

Obermueller, B., Castellani, C., Till, H. et al. 2021. An examination of nest-building behaviour using five different nesting materials in C57BL/6J and BALB/c mice. Animal Welfare 30(4), 467-477.

The aim of our study was to assess the nest-building behaviour of two mouse (Mus musculus) strains using different nesting materials and examine possible sex- and housing-specific effects. Adult mice of two strains (C57BL/6J; n...

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...

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...

Mondin, C., Trestini, S., Trocino, A. et al. 2021. The economics of rabbit farming: A pilot study on the impact of different housing systems. Animals 11(11), 3040.

This research evaluates the economic sustainability of rabbit farms using different housing systems—bicellular (BI), conventional dual-purpose (DP) and enriched cages designed according to the World Rabbit Science Association guidelines (WRSA)—through a field-based study involving six...

Minie, V. A., Petric, R., Ramos-Maciel, S. et al. 2021. Enriched laboratory housing increases sensitivity to social stress in female California mice (Peromyscus californicus). Applied Animal Behaviour Science 241, 105381.

Domesticated mice and rats have shown to be powerful model systems for biomedical research, but there are cases in which the biology of species is a poor match for the hypotheses under study. The California...

Saraiva, J. L., Nogueirinha, M., Teodósio, R. et al. 2021. The effect of tank cover on welfare of farmed Nile tilapia. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 241, 105396.

Welfare in aquaculture is a pressing topic. One of the main measures to improve the life of farmed fish is implementing environmental enrichment, which can include the addition of structural covers to rearing tanks. Here...

Buckinx, A., Van Schuerbeek, A., Bossuyt, J. et al. 2021. Exploring refinement strategies for single housing of male C57BL/6JRj mice: Effect of cage divider on stress-related behavior and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis activity. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 15, 743959.

Introduction: Single housing of laboratory mice is a common practice to meet experimental needs, or to avoid intermale aggression. However, single housing is considered to negatively affect animal welfare and may compromise the scientific validity...

Garcia, T., Brown, C., Margolies, D. et al. 2021. Grinding on a last nerve: Attempting to curb food grinding in mice. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 9(6) (November/December), 34-36.

Food grinding, or chewing food without ingestion, is a topic of interest in the laboratory animal community. In addition to increased effort needed to deal with this excess waste and provide suitable microenvironment for animals...

Ratuski, A. S., Makowska, I. J., Dvorack, K. R. et al. 2021. Using approach latency and anticipatory behaviour to assess whether voluntary playpen access is rewarding to laboratory mice. Scientific Reports 11(1), 18683.

Laboratory mice are typically housed in “shoebox" cages that limit the expression of natural behaviours. Temporary access to more complex environments (playpens) may improve their welfare. We aimed to assess if access to playpens is...

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...

Mertens, S., Gass, P., Palme, R. et al. 2020. Effect of a partial cage dividing enrichment on aggression-associated parameters in group-housed male C57BL/6NCrl mice. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 224, 104939.

Group-housing is highly important for social animals. Group-housing of male mice in captivity though often leads to aggression with partially disastrous consequences for the animals as well as for the quality of experimental data. In...

McAllister, B. B., Thackray, S. E., Garciá de la Orta, B. K. et al. 2020. Effects of enriched housing on the neuronal morphology of mice that lack zinc transporter 3 (ZnT3) and vesicular zinc. Behavioural Brain Research 379, 112336.

In the central nervous system, certain neurons store zinc within the synaptic vesicles of their axon terminals. This vesicular zinc can then be released in an activity-dependent fashion as an intercellular signal. The functions of...

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...

Andresen, N., Wöllhaf, M., Hohlbaum, K. et al. 2020. Towards a fully automated surveillance of well-being status in laboratory mice using deep learning: Starting with facial expression analysis. PLOS ONE 15(4), e0228059.

Assessing the well-being of an animal is hindered by the limitations of efficient communication between humans and animals. Instead of direct communication, a variety of parameters are employed to evaluate the well-being of an animal...

Talbot, S. R., Biernot, S., Bleich, A. et al. 2020. Defining body-weight reduction as a humane endpoint: A critical appraisal. Laboratory Animals 54(1), 99–110.

In many animal experiments scientists and local authorities define a body-weight reduction of 20% or more as severe suffering and thereby as a potential parameter for humane endpoint decisions. In this study, we evaluated distinct...

Oralman, T. 2020. Confronting crunching: A refinement for the care of mice with the desire to crunch. Animal Technology and Welfare 19(1), 89-91.

‘Crunching’ is the term often used to describe the abnormal behaviour of mice that habitually crunch their pelleted diet, causing substrate levels to rise as the crumbs settle on the cage floor ultimately burying the...

Turner, P. V., Pang, D. S., Lofgren, J. L. 2019. A review of pain assessment methods in laboratory rodents. Comparative Medicine 69(6), 451–467.

Ensuring that laboratory rodent pain is well managed underpins the ethical acceptability of working with these animals in research. Appropriate treatment of pain in laboratory rodents requires accurate assessments of the presence or absence of...