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. 
Fiebig, K., Jourdan, T., Kock, M. H. et al. 2018. Evaluation of infrared thermography for temperature measurement in adult male NMRI nude mice. JAALAS 57(6), 715–724.

Temperature monitoring during critical care provides important data required to guide treatment delivery. Body temperature is an easily quantified clinical parameter that can yield much information concerning the health of an animal. In research settings...

Ijichi, C., Griffin, K., Squibb, K. et al. 2018. Stranger danger? An investigation into the influence of human-horse bond on stress and behaviour. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 206, 59-63.

Human-animal bond is receiving increasing attention and is thought to confer benefits on well-being and performance in working animals. One important benefit of bonding is the “safe base” an attachment figure provides, which manifests in...

Neely, C., Lane, C., Torres, J. et al. 2018. The effect of gentle handling on depressive-like behavior in adult male mice: Considerations for human and rodent interactions in the laboratory. Behavioural Neurology 2018, 2976014.

Environmental factors play a significant role in well-being of laboratory animals. Regulations and guidelines recommend, if not require, that stressors such as bright lighting, smells, and noises are eliminated or reduced to maximize animal well-being...

Häger, C., Keubler, L. M., Talbot, S. R. et al. 2018. Running in the wheel: Defining individual severity levels in mice. PLOS Biology 16(10), e2006159.

The fine-scale grading of the severity experienced by animals used in research constitutes a key element of the 3Rs (replace, reduce, and refine) principles and a legal requirement in the European Union Directive 2010/63/EU. Particularly...

Ekesbo, I., Gunnarsson, S. 2018. Farm Animal Behaviour: Characteristics for Assessment and Welfare (2nd ed). CABI, Wallingford, UK.

Completely updated and revised, and with a new author team, this second edition of Farm Animal Behaviour continues to provide essential information on normal and stereotypic behaviors in a wide variety of farm animals to...

Schmidek, A., Nogueira de Oliveira, B., Trindade, P. et al. 2018. Gently handled foals generalize responses to humans. Journal of Animal Behaviour and Biometeorology 6(1), 1-5.

Equines perform tasks along humans, and there are evidences and controversies that they are able to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar humans. This study assessed whether foals can discriminate between humans in terms of familiarity...

Pawluski, J., Jego, P., Henry, S. et al. 2017. Low plasma cortisol and fecal cortisol metabolite measures as indicators of compromised welfare in domestic horses (Equus caballus). PLOS ONE 12(9), e0182257.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis response to chronic stress is far from straight forward, particularly with regards to animal welfare. There are reports of no effect as well as both decreases and increases in cortisol after...

Viksten, S. M., Visser, E. K., Nyman, S. 2017. Developing a horse welfare assessment protocol. Animal Welfare 26(1), 59-65.

This paper describes the development and pilot-testing of a horse welfare assessment protocol (HWAP). The HWAP consists of the collective measurement of numerous factors considered likely to affect a horse's welfare and is thereby designed...

Hintze, S., Roth, E., Bachmann, I. et al. 2017. Toward a choice-based judgment bias task for horses. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 20(2), 123-136.

Judgment bias tasks for nonhuman animals are promising tools to assess emotional valence as a measure of animal welfare. In view of establishing a valid judgment bias task for horses, the present study aimed to...

Hawkins, P., McNeilly, A., Watson, J. et al. 2017. Report of the 2016 RSPCA/UFAW Rodent and Rabbit Welfare Group meeting. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(2), 77-86.

The RSPCA/UFAW Rodent (and now Rabbit) Welfare Group held a one-day meeting on 1 November 2016 at the University of Edinburgh and was attended by 70 delegates. Presentation topics included refinements in blood sampling rodents...

Ferguson, R. 3Rs improvements in the Bexsero® (Meningitis B) vaccine. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(2), 150-152.

Bexsero® is a new vaccine in the UK which since September 2015 has been added to the childhood immunisation programme for the prevention of Meningitis B. The in-vivo test as performed in Biological Services Division...

Forrest, G., Whitfield, L., Thapa, A. 2017. Refining the palpation technique to improve monitoring in the transgenic mouse. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(2), 153-154.

We have developed an accurate method of detecting and monitoring internal ovarian tumours. This reduces the number of procedures, refines the way we detect internal tumours and defines an end point before animals become visibly...

Jones, S., Paul, E. S., Dayan, P. et al. 2017. Pavlovian influences on learning differ between rats and mice in a counterbalanced Go/NoGo judgement bias task. Behavioural Brain Research 331, 214-224.

Judgement bias tests of animal affect and hence welfare assume that the animal’s responses to ambiguous stimuli, which may herald positive or negative outcomes, are under instrumental control and reflect ‘optimism’ or ‘pessimism’ about what...

Waran, N., Randle, H. 2017. What we can measure, we can manage: The importance of using robust welfare indicators in Equitation Science. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 190, 74-81.

Ever since the phrase, ‘the happy athlete’ was introduced into the FEI rules for dressage (Article 401.1) there have been discussions about what this actually means and whether it is possible to recognize and reward...

Hintze, S., Murphy, E., Bachmann, I. et al. 2017. Qualitative Behaviour Assessment of horses exposed to short-term emotional treatments. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 196, 44-51.

Assessing emotion in animals is fundamental to the study of animal welfare with methodologies for reliable and valid assessments being highly desirable. Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) is based on the assumption that human observers are...

Górecka-Bruzda, A., Jaworski, Z., Suwała, M. et al. 2017. Aversiveness of husbandry procedures for pre-weaned foals: A comparison using behavioural and physiological indices. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 191, 31-38.

Husbandry procedures are necessary for different purposes in horse breeding. The aim of the present study was to assess the aversiveness and effects on the horse-human relationship of a range of common husbandry procedures, in...

Reid, K., Rogers, C. W., Gronqvist, G. et al. 2017. Anxiety and pain in horses measured by heart rate variability and behavior. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 22, 1-6.

As a herd species, the horse strongly desires social contact and interaction with conspecifics. Anxiety associated with social isolation may confound the display and interpretation of behavior associated with pain. This study examined the effect...

Novak, J., Stojanovski, K., Melotti, L. et al. 2016. Effects of stereotypic behaviour and chronic mild stress on judgement bias in laboratory mice. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 174, 162-172.

Cognitive processes are influenced by underlying affective states, and tests of cognitive bias have recently been developed to assess the valence of affective states in animals. These tests are based on the fact that individuals...

Spangenberg, E. M. F., Keeling, L. J. 2016. Assessing the welfare of laboratory mice in their home environment using animal-based measures - a benchmarking tool. Laboratory Animals 50(1), 30-38.

Welfare problems in laboratory mice can be a consequence of an ongoing experiment, or a characteristic of a particular genetic line, but in some cases, such as breeding animals, they are most likely to be...

Hintze, S., Smith, S., Patt, A. et al. 2016. Are eyes a mirror of the soul? What eye wrinkles reveal about a horse’s emotional state. PLOS ONE 11(10), e0164017.

Finding valid indicators of emotional states is one of the biggest challenges in animal welfare science. Here, we investigated in horses whether variation in the expression of eye wrinkles caused by contraction of the inner...

Dalla Costa, E., Dai, F., Lebelt, D. et al. 2016. Welfare assessment of horses: the AWIN approach. Animal Welfare 25(4), 481-488.

The EU-funded Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) research project (2011–2015) aimed to improve animal welfare through the development of practical on-farm animal welfare assessment protocols. The present study describes the application of the AWIN approach to...

Lang, A., Schulz, A., Ellinghaus, A. et al. 2016. Osteotomy models – the current status on pain scoring and management in small rodents. Laboratory Animals 50(6), 433-441.

Fracture healing is a complex regeneration process which produces new bone tissue without scar formation. However, fracture healing disorders occur in approximately 10% of human patients and cause severe pain and reduced quality of life...

Graf, R., Cinelli, P., Arras, M. 2016. Morbidity scoring after abdominal surgery. Laboratory Animals 50(6), 453-458.

Postoperative monitoring of pain and distress in small rodents is not standardized, and widely accepted score sheets are not available. Here we describe a score sheet used in abdominal surgery of rodents, with particular reference...

Drude, N., Pawlowsky, K., Tanaka,H. et al. 2016. Severity assessment in rabbits after partial hepatectomy: Part II. Laboratory Animals 50(6), 468-475.

Although the recognition of pain, distress and discomfort has already been described in 1985 by Morton and Griffiths there is still very little known about the establishment of score sheets especially, regarding postsurgical pain and...

Dalla Costa, E., Stucke, D., Dai, F. et al. 2016. Using the Horse Grimace Scale (HGS) to assess pain associated with acute laminitis in horses (Equus caballus). Animals 6(8), 47.

Acute laminitis is a common equine disease characterized by intense foot pain, both acutely and chronically. The Obel grading system is the most widely accepted method for describing the severity of laminitis by equine practitioners...