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. 

Monitoring the activity of mice within their home cage is proving to be a powerful tool for revealing subtle and early-onset phenotypes in mouse models. Video-tracking, in particular, lends itself to automated machine-learning technologies that...

Endotracheal intubation in rabbits is challenging and supraglottic airway devices, such as laryngeal masks (LMA), represent an alternative as they are easy to insert, and do not stimulate the larynx requiring therefore a lighter plane...

Systemic inflammatory response remains a poorly understood cause of morbidity and mortality after traumatic injury. Recent nonhuman primate (NHP) trauma models have been used to characterize the systemic response to trauma, but none have incorporated...

Animal research has always been crucial for various medical and scientific breakthroughs, providing information on disease mechanisms, genetic predisposition to diseases, and pharmacological treatment. However, the use of animals in medical research is a source...

Recent evidence suggests that at least some insect species might plausibly feel pain. These findings should prompt researchers to think about the welfare implications of insect experiments.

Behavioral tests have three key elements: (1) a motivating factor (what motivates the animal in the test); (2) an observable behavior (which behaviors we may expect the animal exhibits in response to the test); (3)...

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...

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...

Pre-emptive local analgesia with the use of lidocaine is practised increasingly in veterinary medicine as part of applied multimodal analgesia, despite its controversial impact on wound healing. The purpose of this prospective, randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled...

Zebrafish is a valuable model for neuroscience research, but the housing conditions to which it is exposed daily may be impairing its welfare status. The use of environmental enrichment and the refinement of methodology for...

The Spritztube (ST) is an extraglottic airway device developed for humans. The aim of the study was to design an ST for rabbits and to evaluate its feasibility. The study was divided into two phases...

Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) of gene expression in live animals is a powerful method for monitoring development, tumor growth, infections, healing, and other progressive, long-term biological processes. BLI remains an effective approach for reducing the number...

A non-invasive method of drug delivery, intranasal atomization, has shown positive results in human medicine and in some animal species. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of intranasal atomization, compared to...

This paper presents and illustrates, with a working example, a hypothesis for the assessment of ongoing severity before and during an experiment that will enable humane endpoints and intervention points to be applied accurately and...

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...

Animal welfare considerations are an essential part of scientific research. If animals may suffer, then even 26 the most promising research plans can be delayed or rejected and the resulting data may be questionable. 27...

The goal of this randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study was to evaluate the effect of environmental enrichment (EE) on post-operative pain and anxiety in dogs following hemilaminectomy for acute intervertebral disc extrusion (IVDE).MethodsTwenty healthy client-owned dogs...

Touchscreen-based procedures are increasingly used in experimental animal research. They not only represent a promising approach for translational research, but have also been highlighted as a powerful tool to reduce potential experimenter effects in animal...

Drug safety and efficacy studies frequently use oral gavage, but repetitive usage may cause problems. Administration through voluntary ingestion represents an opportunity for refinement. We aimed to develop a protocol for voluntary ingestion of gelatin-based...

Mice are the most commonly used laboratory animal, yet there are limited studies which investigate the effects of repeated handling on their welfare and scientific outcomes. Furthermore, simple methods to evaluate distress in mice are...

Research investigating the effects of mirror exposure in mice found that the presence of mirrors has similar effects to the presence of cage mates. Restraint in a small holder induces hyperthermia (stress-induce hyperthermia: SIH) in...

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...

Adequate pain management is essential for ethical and scientific reasons in animal experiments and should completely cover the period of expected pain without the need for frequent re-application. However, current depot formulations of Buprenorphine are...

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...

In response to the growing evidence that hypertension may play a significant role in the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in bonobos, the Great Ape Heart Project established a finger blood pressure (BP) monitoring protocol...