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...

Brando, S., Vitale, A., Bacon, M. 2023. Promoting good nonhuman primate welfare outside regular working hours. Animals 13(8), 1423.

Promoting good primate welfare outside of daylight hours is an important task. The responsibility to provide a complex environment and environmental enrichment is an essential element of primate wellbeing programs that should be approached from...

Łapiński, S., Niedbała, P., Markowska, K. et al. 2023. The effects of age, size, and cage complexity on the behaviour of farmed female chinchillas (Chinchilla lanigera). Scientific Reports 13(1), 6108.

Even though chinchillas have been farmed for a century, there are not many studies concerning their behaviour in captivity or their optimal housing conditions, both of which are important factors in the assessment of their...

Palumbo, G., Kunze, L. H., Oos, R. et al. 2023. Longitudinal studies on Alzheimer disease mouse models with multiple tracer PET/CT: Application of reduction and refinement principles in daily practice to safeguard animal welfare during progressive aging. Animals 13(11), 1812.

Longitudinal studies on mouse models related to Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology play an important role in the investigation of therapeutic targets to help pharmaceutical research in the development of new drugs and in the attempt...

Peruga, M., Kawala, B., Sarul, M. et al. 2023. Are currently selected laboratory animals useful in the research of how female hormones influence orthodontic biomechanics? Animals 13(4), 629.

Animal testing was and remains the only method of introducing a certain treatment and medical procedure on humans. On the other hand, animals have their rights resulting from applicable legal acts, including Directive 2010/63/EU and...

Scatterty, K. R., Pitman, T., Eckersley, T. et al. 2023. Zebrafish aversion to infrasound in an open field test. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 16, 1019368.

Aquatic species are capable of detecting infrasound (sub-20 Hz frequencies) which may be a source of anthropogenic pollution and have a detrimental impact on the environmental fitness of fish. Infrasound is generated by infrastructure, producing...

Veness, A., Coyle, C., Murphy, S. et al. 2023. Minimising aggression in CD-1 and CD-1 background male mice with different enrichment types. Animal Technology and Welfare 22(1), 74–76.

Cage-mate aggression is a well-known problem that is more prevalent in certain strains of mice and is one of the most common reasons for single housing, increased stress levels, premature death and euthanasia. Numerous methods...

Wolter, A., Bucher, C. H., Kurmies, S. et al. 2023. A buprenorphine depot formulation provides effective sustained post-surgical analgesia for 72 h in mouse femoral fracture models. Scientific Reports 13(1), 3824.

Adequate pain management is essential for ethical and scientific reasons in animal experiments and should completely cover the period of expected pain without the need for frequent re-application. However, current depot formulations of Buprenorphine are...

Attokaren, M. K., Jeong, N., Blanpain, L. et al. 2023. BrainWAVE: A flexible method for noninvasive stimulation of brain rhythms across species. ENeuro 10(2) ENEURO.0257-22.2022.

Rhythmic neural activity, which coordinates brain regions and neurons to achieve multiple brain functions, is impaired in many diseases. Despite the therapeutic potential of driving brain rhythms, methods to noninvasively target deep brain regions are...

Silva, P. F., Garcia de Leaniz, C., Freire, F. A. M. et al. 2023. Different housing conditions for zebrafish: What are the effects? Behavioural Processes 209, 104886.

Zebrafish is a popular experimental model in several research areas but little is known about the effects of using different strains or housing conditions. Poor control of genetic background and housing conditions could affect experimental...

Cordeira, J. 2023. Daily replacement of very high-fat diet stabilizes food intake and improves mouse welfare by ensuring food quality. PLOS ONE 18(9), e0291347.

Researchers are obligated to ensure food quality and provide laboratory animals with a palatable diet. Factors influencing the quality and palatability of very high-fat diet (VHFD), a widely used rodent diet, however, are understudied. We...

Smith, S. A. 2023. Fish welfare in public aquariums and zoological collections. Animals 13(16), 2548.

A wide variety of fish species have been displayed in public aquariums and zoological collections for over 150 years. Though the issue of pain perception in fish is still being debated, there is no disagreement...

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...

Van Loo, P. L. P., Janssens, M. R. E. 2023. Why all healthy laboratory animals should be rehomed, no matter how small. Animals 13(17), 2727.

This paper explores the ethical imperative of rehoming all healthy animals of sentient species after experiments have finished or when they have become otherwise redundant. We take into account disparate perspectives in animal ethics and...

Wittek, L., Touma, C., Nitezki, T. et al. 2023. Reduction in cold stress in an innovative metabolic cage housing system increases animal welfare in laboratory mice. Animals 13(18), 2866.

Housing in metabolic cages can induce a pronounced stress response. Metabolic cage systems imply housing mice on metal wire mesh for the collection of urine and feces in addition to monitoring food and water intake...

Serinelli, I., Soloperto, S., Lai, O. R. 2022. Pain and pain management in sea turtle and herpetological medicine: State of the art. Animals 12(6), 697.

In sea turtle rescue and rehabilitative medicine, many of the casualties suffer from occurrences that would be considered painful in other species; therefore, the use of analgesic drugs should be ethically mandatory to manage the...

Davis, H. J., Barabas, A. J., Gaskill, B. N. 2022. Titrating the preferences of altered lighting against temperature in female CD-1 laboratory mice, Mus musculus. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 246, 105541.

Aspects of the laboratory are aversive to mice, such as being housed under bright lights and at temperatures below their thermal comfort, causing stress and poor welfare. While murine thermal preferences are well understood, light...

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...

Merley, A. L., Hubbard, J. S., Rendahl, A. K. et al. 2022. Behavioral and physiologic effects of dirty bedding exposure in female ICR mice. JAALAS 61(1), 42-51.

Exposure of sentinel mice to dirty bedding is commonly used in health monitoring programs to screen colonies for clinical and subclinical disease. Despite the potential stressors present in dirty bedding, including but not limited to...

Scorrano, F. 2022. A new feeder device to provide cleaner and accessible diet gel to laboratory mice. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 10(2) (March/April), 50-52.

Gel solutions are simple to use, have a relative long shelf life and can be delivered with plastic cups or pouches. A common issue encountered by many institutions is that the gel becomes soiled quickly...

Popper, A. N., Sisneros, J. A. 2022. The sound world of zebrafish: A critical review of hearing assessment. Zebrafish 19(2), 37-48.

Zebrafish, like all fish species, use sound to learn about their environment. Thus, human-generated (anthropogenic) sound added to the environment has the potential to disrupt the detection of biologically relevant sounds, alter behavior, impact fitness...

Stevens, C., Dobbinson, K., Brook, E. et al. 2022. Report of the 2021 RSPCA/UFAW Rodent Welfare Group meeting. Animal Technology and Welfare 21(2), 83-91.

The RSPCA/UFAW Rodent Welfare Group has held a one-day meeting every autumn for the last 28 years, so that its members can discuss current welfare research, exchange views on welfare issues and share experiences of...

Kolbe, T., Lassnig, C., Poelzl, A. et al. 2022. Effect of different ambient temperatures on reproductive outcome and stress level of lactating females in two mouse strains. Animals 12(16), 2141.

Ambient temperature is an important non-biotic environmental factor influencing immunological and oncological parameters in laboratory mice. It is under discussion which temperature is more appropriate and whether the commonly used room temperature in rodent facilities...

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...

Mocho, J.-P., Collymore, C., Farmer, S. C. et al. 2022. FELASA-AALAS recommendations for monitoring and reporting of laboratory fish diseases and health status, with an emphasis on zebrafish (Danio rerio). Comparative Medicine 72(3), 127-148.

The exchange of fish for research may expose an aquatic laboratory to pathogen contamination as incoming fish can introduce bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses capable of affecting both experimental results and fish and personnel health...