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. 
Golledge, H., Richardson, C. (Eds.) 2024. The UFAW Handbook on the Care and Management of Laboratory and Other Research Animals (9th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. 1040 p.

The latest edition of the seminal reference on the care and management of laboratory and research animals. The newly revised ninth edition of The UFAW Handbook on the Care and Management of Laboratory and Other...

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...

Kannan, G., Batchu, P., Naldurtiker, A. et al. 2023. Habituation to livestock trailer and its influence on stress responses during transportation in goats. Animals 13(7), 1191.

This experiment was conducted to determine the effects of habituation to livestock trailers on stress responses in goats transported for long periods. Intact male Spanish goats (12-month old; BW = 31.6 ± 0.34 kg; N...

Kumar, P., Abubakar, A. A., Ahmed, M. A. et al. 2023. Electroencephalogram and physiological responses as affected by slaughter empathy in goats. Animals 13(6), 1100.

Recent advances in emotions and cognitive science make it imperative to assess the emotional stress in goats at the time of slaughter. The present study was envisaged to study the electroencephalogram and physiological responses as...

Morgado, J. N., Lamonaca, E., Santeramo, F. G. et al. 2023. Effects of management strategies on animal welfare and productivity under heat stress: A synthesis. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10, 1145610.

Climate change includes different dramatic events, and among them, heat stress exposition is the strongest phenomenon affecting the livestock sector. The effects of heat stress events on animal welfare are complex and the economic impacts...

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...

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...

Watanabe, S. 2023. Infrared thermography for non-invasive measurement of social inequality aversion in rodents and potential usefulness for future animal-friendly studies. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 17, 1131427.

Infrared thermography is a method that detects thermal radiation energy and can measure the body surface temperature of animals from a distance. While rectal temperature has traditionally been used to measure animals’ core temperature, thermal...

Williams, E., Hunton, V., Hosey, G. et al. 2023. The impact of visitors on non-primate species in zoos: A quantitative review. Animals 13(7), 1178.

Visitors are a prominent feature in the lives of zoo animals, and their presence can cause a range of impacts on zoo animals (typically classed as positive, negative or neutral impacts), commonly referred to as...

Brando, S., Norman, M. 2023. Handling and training of wild animals: Evidence and ethics-based approaches and best practices in the modern zoo. Animals 13(14), 2247.

There is an ethical responsibility to provide all animals living in human care with optimal and positive well-being. As animals living in zoos and aquariums frequently interact with their human caregivers as part of their...

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...

Kastelic, M., Gregurić Gračner, G., Tomažič, I. et al. 2023. Comparison of cortisol concentrations in different matrices in Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) at the zoo. Animals 13(15), 2491.

The usefulness of blood collection using venipuncture versus kissing bugs or medicinal leeches and the collection of saliva, faeces, hair, urine, and tears for measuring “immunoreactive” C (iC) concentration in Alpine ibexes was verified using...

Kongara, K., Singh, P., Venkatachalam, D. et al. 2023. Pain assessment in goat kids: Focus on disbudding. Animals 13(24), 3814.

Farm animals are routinely subjected to painful husbandry procedures for various purposes. Goat kids are disbudded to improve goat welfare and to ensure safety of other livestock, farm personnel, attending veterinarians and for various other...

Majelantle, T. L., Ganswindt, A., Ganswindt, S. B. et al. 2023. Non-invasive quantification of faecal and urine reproductive hormone metabolites in the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber). Animals 13(19), 3039.

The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) occurs in colonies with a distinct dominance hierarchy, including one dominant, breeding female (the queen), 1–3 breeding males, and non-reproductive subordinates of both sexes that are reproductively suppressed while in...

Marin, N., Moragon, A., Gil, D. et al. 2023. Acclimation and blood sampling: Effects on stress markers in C57Bl/6J mice. Animals 13(18), 2816.

Blood sampling in rodents is common practice in scientific studies. Some of the refined methods widely used are the puncture of the saphenous vein or tail vein, or even tail docking. The handling needs of...

Oikawa, T., Nomura, K., Hara, T. et al. 2023. A fine-scale and minimally invasive marking method for use with conventional tungsten microelectrodes. eNeuro 10(9), ENEURO.0141-23.2023.

In neurophysiology, achieving precise correlation between physiological responses and anatomic structures is a significant challenge. Therefore, the accuracy of the electrode marking method is crucial. In this study, we describe a tungsten-deposition method, in which...

Olczak, K., Penar, W., Nowicki, J. et al. 2023. The role of sound in livestock farming—Selected aspects. Animals 13(14), 2307.

To ensure the optimal living conditions of farm animals, it is essential to understand how their senses work and the way in which they perceive their environment. Most animals have a different hearing range compared...

Pretorius, Y., Eggeling, T., Ganswindt, A. 2023. Identifying potential measures of stress and disturbance during a captive to wild African elephant reintegration. PLOS ONE 18(10), e0291293.

There is increasing evidence of compromised welfare for elephants managed in captivity. Should such facilities eventually close, more elephants will need to be rehabilitated and reintegrated into the wild. The goal of such reintegration would...

Stevens, C., Hammonds, T., Hinchcliffe, J. et al. 2023. Report of the 2022 RSPCA/UFAW Rodent Welfare Group Meeting. Animal Technology and Welfare 22(2), 91–100.

The RSPCA/UFAW Rodent Welfare Group has held a one-day meeting every autumn for the last 29 years, so that its members can discuss current welfare research, exchange views on welfare issues and share experiences of...

Wang, C., Yang, C., Zeng, Y. et al. 2023. GnRH-immunocastration: An alternative method for male animal surgical castration. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10.
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...

Molnar, D. L., Vernasco Price, E. J. 2023. Use of a toy soak to maximize staff efficiency in cage wash operations. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 11(2) (March/April), 40-41.

The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals emphasizes that the primary aim of environmental enrichment is to enhance animal well-being. At our facility, at the end of a two-week cycle in a...

Alizadeh, E. A., Graf, K., Schiwon, J. et al. 2023. Thirty years of telemetry-based data acquisition for cardiovascular drug safety evaluation: Applications and optimization. Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods 122, 107279.

Conducting safety evaluations of new drugs using conscious animals has been a specialty of our working group for thirty years. In this article, we review the various technical challenges and solutions dealt with over the...

Alvarez, L., Terrazas, A., Rojas, S. et al. 2023. Cortisol and pain-related behavior in hot-iron disbudded goat kids sedated with xylazine and locally infiltrated with lidocaine. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 63, 42–47.

Disbudding induces intense pain-related behavioral and physiological responses in goat kids. Using only regional anesthesia may not be effective in ameliorating these responses. We determined the effect of xylazine-sedation with or without regional infiltration of...