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. 
Digranes, N., Haga, H. A., Nordgreen, J. 2023. High and hyper: Fentanyl induces psychomotor side-effects in healthy pigs. Animals 13(10), 1671.

Analgesic effects of fentanyl have been investigated using behavior. The behavioral effects of fentanyl and possible serotonergic influence are largely unknown. We therefore investigated behavioral effects of fentanyl, with or without the serotonin antagonist ketanserin...

Eeza, M. N. H., Singer, R., Ding, Y. et al. 2023. Probing microstructural changes in muscles of leptin-deficient zebrafish by non-invasive ex-vivo magnetic resonance microimaging. PLOS ONE 18(4), e0284215.

Leptin is a hormone that plays a key role in controlling food intake and energy homeostasis. Skeletal muscle is an important target for leptin and recent studies have shown that leptin deficiency may lead to...

Wong, C.-H., Tsai, M.-A., Ko, F.-C. et al. 2023. Skin cortisol and acoustic activity: Potential tools to evaluate stress and welfare in captive cetaceans. Animals 13(9), 1521.

As people’s focus broadens from animals on farms to zoos and aquaria, the field of welfare science and the public’s concern for animal welfare continue to grow. In captive animals, stress and its causes are...

Costa, G. L., Spadola, F., Di Pietro, S. et al. 2023. Tramadol vs. Lidocaine administered intraperitoneally and in incisional lines for the intraoperative and postoperative pain management of romifidine-telazol-anesthetized swine undergoing umbilical hernia repair. Animals 13(18), 2905.

The aim of the study was to compare the analgesic efficacy of tramadol and lidocaine for local anesthesia during umbilical hernia repair in swine. The study was performed on 66 large white crossbred swine. The...

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...

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...

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...

Windsor, P. A. 2022. Role of topical anaesthesia in pain management of farm animals, a changing paradigm. Animals 12(18), 2459.

Field evidence indicates that livestock producers are motivated by access to products that readily deliver pain management during husbandry interventions and, more recently, viral epidermal infectious diseases, including FMD. There has been impressive adoption in...

Weisskopf, M., Glaus, L., Trimmel, N. E. et al. 2022. Dos and don’ts in large animal models of aortic insufficiency. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 949410.

Aortic insufficiency caused by paravalvular leakage (PVL) is one of the most feared complications following transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVI) in patients. Domestic pigs (Sus scrofa domestica) are a popular large animal model to study...

Serres, A., Xu, C., Hao, Y. et al. 2021. The click production of captive Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaorientalis) is influenced by social and environmental factors. Animals 11(2), 511.

Yangtze finless porpoises use high-frequency clicks to navigate, forage, and communicate. The way in which click production may vary depending on social or environmental context has never been investigated. A group of five captive Yangtze...

Bolt, L. M. 2021. Agonistic vocalization behaviour in the male ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta). Primates 62(2), 417–430.

Vocalizations are used by group-living animals as aggressive and submissive signals during agonistic interactions, and are also used to maintain dominance hierarchies in many species. For gregarious strepsirrhines with large vocal repertoires and differentiated dominance...

Olson, M. J., Creamer, M., Horback, K. M. 2021. Identification of specific call types produced by pre-weaning gilts in response to isolation. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 234, 105203.

Monitoring the vocalizations produced by livestock in commercial facilities can be used to remotely assess the arousal, and perhaps welfare, of the animals. Domestic swine is an ideal candidate for this type of assessment as...

Manell, E., Hedenqvist, P., Jensen-Waern, M. 2021. Training pigs for oral glucose tolerance test—Six years’ experience of a refined model. Animals 11(6), 1677.

Animal models of human diseases are important in biomedical research. When using animals for scientific purposes, the 3Rs (replace, reduce, refine) should be considered. Refinement of animal models is essential to ensure best use of...

Steagall, P. V., Bustamante, H., Johnson, C. B. et al. 2021. Pain management in farm animals: Focus on cattle, sheep and pigs. Animals 11(6), 1483.

Pain causes behavioral, autonomic, and neuroendocrine changes and is a common cause of animal welfare compromise in farm animals. Current societal and ethical concerns demand better agricultural practices and improved welfare for food animals. These...

Archibald, W., Glynn, C. 2021. Refining cages for social housing of non-human primates on ADME studies. Animal Technology and Welfare 20(2), 172-174.

The assessment and understanding of Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Elimination (ADME) for new pharmaceuticals is required in regulatory submissions. Typically, ADME studies are conducted using metabolism cages designed for the single housing of animals to...

Hausmann, J. C., Krisp, A. R., Mans, C. et al. 2021. Analgesic efficacy of tramadol and morphine in White's tree frogs (Litoria caerulea). JAALAS 60(6), 681-686.

Published data are sparse regarding the recognition of clinically relevant pain and appropriate analgesia in amphibians. The amphibian analgesia literature has primarily focused on nociceptive pathways in a single species, the northern leopard frog (Rana...

Kinaci, A., Vaessen, K., Redegeld, S. et al. 2021. Minimizing complications in a porcine survival craniotomy model. Laboratory Animals 55(5), 435-442.

A large craniotomy survival porcine model is useful for scientific research. The surgical approaches and complications of craniotomies in pigs have not been published before. This study describes how large craniotomies were performed in 46...

Probert, R., Bastian, A., Elwen, S. H. et al. 2021. Vocal correlates of arousal in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops spp.) in human care. PLOS ONE 16(9), e0250913.

Human-controlled regimes can entrain behavioural responses and may impact animal welfare. Therefore, understanding the influence of schedules on animal behaviour can be a valuable tool to improve welfare, however information on behaviour overnight and in...

Jones, B. L., Oswald, M., Tufano, S. et al. 2021. A system for monitoring acoustics to supplement an animal welfare plan for bottlenose dolphins. Journal of Zoological and Botanical Gardens 2(2), 222–233.

Animal sounds are commonly used by humans to infer information about their motivations and their health, yet, acoustic data is an underutilized welfare biomarker especially for aquatic animals. Here, we describe an acoustic monitoring system...

Ajuda, I., Battini, M., Mattiello, S. et al. 2020. Evaluation of pain mitigation strategies in goat kids after cautery disbudding. Animals 10(2), 277.

Nowadays, most of the goat milk production in developed countries is done in intensive indoors production systems. In these systems, procedures such as disbudding are performed routinely. Disbudding is done in young goat kids and...

Burkemper, M. C., Pairis-Garcia, M. D., Moraes, L. E. et al. 2020. Effects of oral meloxicam and topical lidocaine on pain associated behaviors of piglets undergoing surgical castration. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 23(2), 209-218.

The objective of this study was to find a practical means of reducing pain associated with surgical castration by evaluating the effects of oral meloxicam and topical lidocaine, separately and in combination, on behavioral indicators...

Hempstead, M. N., Waas, J. R., Stewart, M. et al. 2020. Goat kids are not small calves: Species comparisons in relation to disbudding. Animal Welfare 29(3), 293-312.

Limited scientific literature is available for developing 'best practices' guidelines for the management of dairy goats (Caprus hircus), particularly goat kids. Disbudding practices for kids and calves appear to be similar, however, it is important...

Hempstead, M. N., Waas, J. R., Stewart, M. et al. 2020. Can isoflurane and meloxicam mitigate pain associated with cautery disbudding of 3-week-old goat kids? Animals 10(5), 878.

We evaluated the effect of pain mitigation strategies (isoflurane and meloxicam) on the behaviour and physiology of 3-week-old disbudded goat kids. Fifty Saanen does (mean ± SD, 21 ± 3 days old) were randomly allocated...

Millecam, J., van Bergen, T., Devreese, M. 2020. Gastrostomy tube placement via a laparotomic procedure in growing conventional piglets to perform multidose preclinical paediatric drug studies. Laboratory Animals 54(3), 261-271.

The use of juvenile conventional pigs as a preclinical animal model to perform pharmacokinetic (PK), pharmacodynamic (PD) and safety studies for the paediatric population is increasing. Repetitive oral administration of drugs to juvenile pigs is...

Hagemeister, K., Ernst, L., Kadaba Srinivasan, P. et al. 2020. Severity assessment in pigs after partial liver resection: Evaluation of a score sheet. Laboratory Animals 54(3), 251–260.

Severity assessment in biomedical research is required by the European authorities. Therefore, a variety of score sheets are available. The first score sheets were designed and introduced by Morton and Griffith (M&G) in 1985, to...