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. 
Lambert, H., Cornish, A., Waley, D. 2024. The value of regulating stocking densities in aquaculture must not be dismissed: A reply to Saraiva et al. 2022. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10.

We would like to rebut the argument made by Saraiva et al. (1) in their paper “Finding the “golden stocking density”: a balance between fish welfare and farmers' perspectives,” that stocking densities should not be...

Higham, J. P., Cooper, E. B., Whalen, C. et al. 2023. Urinary cytokine measurements do not reflect surgery-induced inflammation in rhesus macaques. American Journal of Primatology 85(8), e23506.

Measurement of the health and disease status of free-ranging primates is often limited by a lack of available biomarkers of immune activation and inflammation that can be applied noninvasively via the measurement of urine or...

Chakravarty, S., Donoghue, J., Waite, A. S. et al. 2023. Closed-loop control of anesthetic state in nonhuman primates. PNAS Nexus 2(10), 293.

Research in human volunteers and surgical patients has shown that unconsciousness under general anesthesia can be reliably tracked using real-time electroencephalogram processing. Hence, a closed-loop anesthesia delivery (CLAD) system that maintains precisely specified levels of...

Cameron, A. S., Rub, A. M. W., Sandford, B. P. 2023. Evaluation of healing progression at surgical incision sites and the use of antiseptics for enhancing post-operative survival in subyearling Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). PLOS ONE 18(7), e0288056.

In an attempt to develop more effective surgical implantation methods for fish, surgical incisions typical of those made for implanting micro-acoustic transmitters into the peritoneal cavity were evaluated on a weekly basis for healing progression...

Nunes, S. 2023. Animal-friendly behavioral testing in field studies: Examples from ground squirrels. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 17.

Field studies of behavior provide insight into the expression of behavior in its natural ecological context and can serve as an important complement to behavioral studies conducted in the lab under controlled conditions. In addition...

Piekarski, N., Hobbs, T. R., Jacob, D. et al. 2023. A comparison of oocyte yield between ultrasound-guided and laparoscopic oocyte retrieval in rhesus macaques. Animals 13(19), 3017.

Obtaining quality oocytes is a prerequisite for ART-based studies. Here we describe a method for transabdominal ultrasound-guided (US) oocyte retrieval in rhesus macaques (Macaca mullata) and compare it to the standard surgical approach using laparoscopy...

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...

Nicolis, I. N., Beale, C. N., Bidot, W. A. et al. 2022. Performance and consistency of circulating warm water blankets for rodents. JAALAS 61(1), 96-100.

General anesthesia as used for rodent research can have adverse effects on physiologic mechanisms. Thermoregulation is often greatly inhibited, with resultant deleterious effects on cardiac and respiratory function. These potential effects can be mitigated by...

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...

Bethell, E. J., Khan, W., Hussain, A. 2022. A deep transfer learning model for head pose estimation in rhesus macaques during cognitive tasks: Towards a nonrestraint noninvasive 3Rs approach. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 255, 105708.

Head orientation is a measure of attention used in behavioral psychological research with non-human primates. It is used across a broad range of disciplines and settings, from the field to the laboratory. Field methods are...

Jacob, G., Katti, H., Cherian, T. et al. 2021. A naturalistic environment to study visual cognition in unrestrained monkeys. eLife 10, e63816.

Macaque monkeys are widely used to study vision. In the traditional approach, monkeys are brought into a lab to perform visual tasks while they are restrained to obtain stable eye tracking and neural recordings. Here...

Charbonneau, J. A., Amaral, D. G. Bliss-Moreau, E. 2022. Social housing status impacts rhesus monkeys’ affective responding in classic threat processing tasks. Scientific Reports 12(1), 4140.

Individuals’ social contexts are broadly recognized to impact both their psychology and neurobiology. These effects are observed in people and in nonhuman animals who are the subjects for comparative and translational science. The social contexts...

Saraiva, J. L., Rachinas-Lopes, P., Arechavala-Lopez, P. 2022. Finding the “golden stocking density”: A balance between fish welfare and farmers’ perspectives. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 930221.

The effects of stocking density on fish welfare are complex and involve many interacting parameters. This complex relationship between fish welfare, stocking density and influencing factors make it challenging to define a specific optimal (“golden”)...

Bethell, E. J., Khan, W., Hussain, A. 2022. A deep transfer learning model for head pose estimation in rhesus macaques during cognitive tasks: Towards a nonrestraint noninvasive 3Rs approach. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 255, 105708.

Head orientation is a measure of attention used in behavioral psychological research with non-human primates. It is used across a broad range of disciplines and settings, from the field to the laboratory. Field methods are...

da Silva Medeiros Elidio, H., Coelho, J. W. R., Cavalcanti Pereira da Silva, L. C. et al. 2021. Housing density and aggression in Syrian hamsters. JAALAS 60(5), 506-509.

The Syrian hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) is a solitary and naturally territorial animal, with female hamsters being more aggressive than males. This behavior makes handling difficult because they are usually housed in groups, which can lead...

Bowling, P. A., Bencivenga, M. A., Leyva, M. E. et al. 2021. Effects of a heated anesthesia breathing circuit on body temperature in anesthetized rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). JAALAS 60(6), 675-680.

This study evaluated the effects of using a heated anesthesia breathing circuit in addition to forced-air warming on body temperature in anesthetized rhesus macaques as compared with forced-air warming alone. Hypothermia is a common perianesthetic...

Eshar, D., Beaufrère, H. 2020. Anesthetic effects of alfaxalone–ketamine, alfaxalone–ketamine–dexmedetomidine, and alfaxalone–butorphanol–midazolam administered intramuscularly in five striped palm squirrels (Funambulus pennantii). JAALAS 59(4), 384-392.

Injectable anesthesia protocols for five striped palm squirrels (Funambulus pennantii) are poorly described in the literature. In this study, male intact squirrels received intramuscular injections of either alfaxalone (6 mg/kg) and ketamine (40 mg/ kg...

Ambar, N., Eshar, D., Shrader, T. C. et al. 2020. Anesthetic effects of intramuscular alfaxalone–ketamine in naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber). JAALAS 59(5), 539-545.

In this study, adult intact male and female (n = 10) naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) were anesthetized by using a combination of ketamine (20 mg/kg IM), and alfaxalone (4.0 mg/kg IM). Induction and recovery...

Browning, G. R., Eshar, D., Beaufrere, H. 2019. Comparison of dexmedetomidine-ketamine-midazolam and isoflurane for anesthesia of black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus). JAALAS 58(1), 50-57.

Few studies evaluate anesthesia in black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus). Isoflurane inhalant anesthesia is used in this species most commonly, but injectable protocols are poorly described. Here we compared the physiologic effects, including anesthetic depth...

Engel, R. M., Thomas III, M. L., Banks, R. E. 2019. Regional anesthesia for dentistry and orofacial surgery in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). JAALAS 58(2), 223-230.

Regional anesthesia is a commonly used adjunct to orofacial dental and surgical procedures in companion animals and humans. However, appropriate techniques for anesthetizing branches of the mandibular and maxillary nerves have not been described for...

Smith, A. A., Halliday, L. C., Lindeblad, M. O. et al. 2019. Evaluation of analgesic patches in cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fascicularis). JAALAS 58(3), 356-361.

Opioids are widely used in veterinary and human medicine to manage pain. However, there is a paucity of information in the literature regarding the pharmacokinetics of opioid transdermal patches (TDP) in NHP. Therefore, to determine...

Chatigny, F. 2019. The controversy on fish pain: A veterinarian’s perspective. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 22(4), 400-410.

Fish welfare is still a relatively new field. As such, regulations and protocols to ensure fish welfare are currently limited and vary considerably in different jurisdictions. This is in part because of the ongoing controversy...

Sloman, K, A., Bouyoucos, I. A., Brooks, E. J. et al. 2019. Ethical considerations in fish research. Journal of Fish Biology 94(4), 556-577.

In this review, we focus primarily on the refinement of common methods used in fish research based on emerging knowledge with the aim of improving the welfare of fish used in scientific studies. We consider...

Santurtun, E., Broom, D. M., Phillips, C. J. C. 2018. A review of factors affecting the welfare of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Animal Welfare 27(3), 193-204.

In the expanding salmon industry, many farmers use production methods that could result in poor welfare of the fish at various points of their lifecycle. We have reviewed methods used for producing salmon for food...

Chatigny, F., Creighton, C. M., Stevens, E. D. 2018. Updated review of fish analgesia. JAALAS 57(1), 5-12.

Analgesics are an integral part of routine pain management in mammals, yet their use in fish is still limited. Some recommendations on the use of analgesics in fish are currently in the literature; however, information...