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...

Warner-Hough, M. 2024. Enriching the lives of zebra finches. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 12(1) (January/February), 28-30.

Zebra finches are an uncommon animal model in the biomedical industry but are widely used in language development, memory, and learning studies. Native to Australia, they are desert birds that like warm days and 40%+...

Mantz, M., Pugerud, A. 2024. Overcoming the hurdles of lab animal enrichment: Natural behaviors vs. scientific need. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 12(1) (January/February), 32-34.

The Animal Resources Core (ARC) at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute (AWRI) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) faces many of the same challenges other institutions manage in terms of enrichment for laboratory animals. A Behavior...

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...

Johnson, J. 2023. A new strategy for animal research: Attending to dissent. Animals 13(9), 1491.

Increasingly, ethical concepts ordinarily reserved for the human research setting have been applied to nonhuman animals in research. This comes at the same time as concerns mount over challenges in translating the results of biomedical...

Kaiser, S., Korte, A., Wistuba, J. et al. 2023. Effects of castration and sterilization on baseline and response levels of cortisol—A case study in male guinea pigs. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 1093157.

An uncontrolled reproduction of animals in human hands should be avoided. To meet this goal, animals are widely castrated, i.e., the gonads are completely removed. Since the gonads are the most important source of sex...

Liu, P., Roberts, S., Shoemaker, J. T. et al. 2023. Validation of a 3D perfused cell culture platform as a tool for humanised preclinical drug testing in breast cancer using established cell lines and patient-derived tissues. PLOS ONE 18(3), e0283044.

3D cell culture models of cancer are currently being developed to recapitulate in vivo physiological conditions and to assess therapeutic responses. However, most models failed to incorporate the biochemical and biophysical stimuli from fluid flow...

Miller, L. J., Chinnadurai, S. K. 2023. Beyond the five freedoms: Animal welfare at modern zoological facilities. Animals 13(11), 1818.

The current manuscript highlights the aspects of an animal welfare program for a modern zoological facility. The program should be proactive to identify areas for continuous improvement as well as reactive to address any identified...

Miller, R., Grott, A., Patzkéwitsch, D. et al. 2023. Behavior of piglets in an observation arena before and after castration with local anesthesia. Animals 13(3), 529.

Surgical castration of piglets is generally recognized as a painful procedure, but there is currently no gold standard for the assessment of pain behavior in piglets. However, pain assessment is essential for evaluating the effectiveness...

Palermo Mendes, J., Ribeiro Caldara, F., de Castro Burbarelli, M. F. et al. 2023. Performance and welfare of sows exposed to auditory environmental enrichment in mixed or collective housing systems. Animals 13(7), 1226.

The research aimed to assess the effects of auditory environmental enrichment on sows in mixed housing (caged until 35 days after insemination and then collective pens) or collective housing (caged until 72 h after insemination...

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...

Robles, I., Luna, S. P. L., Trindade, P. H. E. et al. 2023. Validation of the Unesp-Botucatu pig composite acute pain scale (UPAPS) in piglets undergoing castration. PLOS ONE 18(4), e0284218.

To accurately assess pain and support broadly-based analgesic protocols to mitigate swine pain, it is imperative to develop and validate a species-specific pain scale. The objective of this study was to investigate the clinical validity...

Rørvang, M. V., Schild, S.-L. A., Stenfelt, J. et al. 2023. Odor exploration behavior of the domestic pig (Sus scrofa) as indicator of enriching properties of odors. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 17, 1173298.

Although the sense of smell in pigs is widely recognized as being highly developed, surprisingly little is known about their sensory ability. This study aimed to (a) identify which non-social odors pigs were able to...

Warwick, C., Steedman, C., Jessop, M. et al. 2023. Defining short-term accommodation for animals. Animals 13(4), 732.

The terms short-term, temporary, and transitional are related but can have different contexts and meanings for animal husbandry. The definitions and use of these terms can be pivotal to animal housing and welfare. We conducted...

Waltz, M., Fisher, J. A., Walker, R. L. 2023. Mission creep or mission lapse? Scientific review in research oversight. AJOB Empirical Bioethics 14(1), 38-49.

Background: The ethical use both of human and non-human animals in research is predicated on the assumption that it is of a high quality and its projected benefits are more significant than the risks and...

Monteiro, M. S., Muro, B. B. D., Carnevale, R. F. et al. 2023. The beneficial effects of providing prepartum sows with nesting materials on farrowing traits, piglet performance and maternal behavior: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 259, 105795.

Sows are highly motivated to engage in nest-building behavior prior to farrowing. Studies have shown that providing nesting material to farrowing sows reduces the occurrence of redirected nest-building behaviors, improves farrowing traits and maternal behavior...

Veldkamp, F., Garcia-Faria, T. I., Witjes, V. L. et al. 2023. Validation of non-invasive sensor technologies to measure interaction with enrichment material in weaned fattening pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 263, 105923.

Measuring animal behaviour is important in the assessment of animal welfare. When interaction with the enrichment material (EM) can be measured, it can be used for detecting an increasing/decreasing interest in a certain EM. In...

Meira, J. E. S., Nogueira-Filho, S. L. G., Mendl, M. et al. 2023. Responses to environmental enrichment are associated with personality characteristics in chestnut-bellied seed finches (Sporophila angolensis). Behavioural Processes 204, 104801.

Environmental enrichment (EE) is used to promote natural behaviours in captive animals and may hold promise as a form of pre-release training, a strategy for improving coping skills of translocated birds. We investigated the use...

Alvarez-Hernandez, N., Vallejo-Timarán, D., de Jesús Rodriguez, B. 2023. Adapted original music as an environmental enrichment in an intensive pig production system reduced aggression in weaned pigs during regrouping. Animals 13(23), 3599.

In intensive swine production systems,, the practice of regrouping unfamiliar pigs is common, often leading to aggressive behavior. Although the effect of different musical genres composed for humans has been evaluated in pigs to mitigate...

D’Alessio, R. M., McAloon, C. G., Boyle, L. A. et al. 2023. Comparison between two scoring methods to assess tail damage of docked pig carcasses during postmortem inspection in Ireland. Veterinary Record Open 10(2), e66.

Background Tail inspection in the abattoir is a tool to help determine the welfare status of pigs. However, methodologies vary widely. Moreover, meat inspection is moving from palpation and incision towards visual-only (VIS) examination. This...

De Vleeschauwer, S., Lambaerts, K., Hernot, S. et al. 2023. Severity classification of laboratory animal procedures in two Belgian academic institutions. Animals 13(16), 2581.

According to the EU Directive 2010/63, all animal procedures must be classified as non-recovery, mild, moderate or severe. Several examples are included in the Directive to help in severity classification. Since the implementation of the...

Englund, M. D., Cronin, K. A. 2023. Choice, control, and animal welfare: Definitions and essential inquiries to advance animal welfare science. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10.

The ways in which humans can support good welfare for animals in their care is an ongoing subject of debate: some place emphasis on the animals’ physical health; others, on animals’ ability to live “natural...

Enkelmann, A., Bischoff, S. J. 2023. CIRS-LAS – a novel approach to increase transparency in laboratory animal science for improving animal welfare by reducing laboratory animal distress. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10.

The 3Rs principle is highly topical in animal-based research. These include, above all, new scientific methods for conducting experiments without an animal model, by using non-animal models (Replace), reducing the number of laboratory animals (Reduction)...

Graham, J. C., Wong, L., Adedeji, A. O. et al. 2023. Fostering animal welfare and advancing 3Rs principles through the establishment of a 3Rsadvisory group. Animals 13(24), 3863.

Based on the current state of science, the use of animals remains essential in bringing safe and effective medicines to patients. Respect for laboratory animal welfare and the application of 3Rs principles (the replacement, reduction...