Mouse

Moving away from soiled bedding sentinels—The (R)evolution in rodent health screening

Traditional health monitoring methods consist of Soiled Bedding Sentinels (SBS), with animals exposed to dirty bedding from colony animals, which require the euthanasia of SBS. Numerous studies have demonstrated that SBS may not accurately represent a colony's health status. During...

Year Published: 2023Topics: Biological Sampling & Physiological MeasurementAnimal Type: Mouse, Rat, Rodent

Citation: Esparza, K. 2023. Moving away from soiled bedding sentinels—The (R)evolution in rodent health screening. Animal Technology and Welfare 22(2), 158–160.

Daily replacement of very high-fat diet stabilizes food intake and improves mouse welfare by ensuring food quality

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 conducted experiments to establish best...

Year Published: 2023Topics: Husbandry & ManagementAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: 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.

Effect of environmental exposure to a maternally-learned odorant on anxiety-like behaviors at weaning in mice

Early sensory experience, such as exposure to maternal or other environmental factors, is considered to influence neurocognitive development and behaviors. In many species, exposure to odorants during pregnancy or lactation impacts the morpho-functional development of the olfactory circuitry with changes...

Year Published: 2020Topics: Emotion, Pain, & Sentience, Environmental Enrichment, Rearing & WeaningAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Dewaele, A., Badonnel, K., Persuy, M.-A. et al. 2020. Effect of environmental exposure to a maternally-learned odorant on anxiety-like behaviors at weaning in mice. Animal Cognition 23(5), 881–891.

Nesting behavior is associated with body weight and grip strength loss in mice suffering from experimental arthritis

Objective animal health evaluation is essential to determine welfare and discomfort in preclinical in vivo research. Body condition scores, body weight, and grimace scales are commonly used to evaluate well-being in murine rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis experiments. However, nest-building,...

Year Published: 2023Topics: Welfare AssessmentAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Dietrich, T., Aigner, A., Hildebrandt, A. et al. 2023. Nesting behavior is associated with body weight and grip strength loss in mice suffering from experimental arthritis. Scientific Reports 13(1), 23087.

Locomotor activity as an effective measure of the severity of inflammatory arthritis in a mouse model

Objective Mouse models are valuable in preclinical studies of inflammatory arthritis. However, current methods for measuring disease severity or responses to treatment are not optimal. In this study a smart cage system using multiple sensors to measure locomotor activity was...

Year Published: 2024Topics: Disease/Experimental ModelAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Doucet, M. R., Laevski, A. M., Doiron, J. A. et al. 2024. Locomotor activity as an effective measure of the severity of inflammatory arthritis in a mouse model. PLOS ONE 19(1), e0291399.

Environmental enrichment improves hippocampus-dependent spatial learning in female C57BL/6 mice in novel IntelliCage sweet reward-based behavioral tests

The IntelliCage is an automated home-cage system that allows researchers to investigate the spontaneous behavior and learning abilities of group-housed mice. The IntelliCage enables us to increase the standardization and reproducibility of behavioral outcomes by the omission of experimenter–mouse interactions....

Year Published: 2023Topics: Animal Training, Behavioral & Cognitive Testing, Environmental EnrichmentAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Bramati, G., Stauffer, P., Nigri, M. et al. 2023. Environmental enrichment improves hippocampus-dependent spatial learning in female C57BL/6 mice in novel IntelliCage sweet reward-based behavioral tests. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 17.

Structural enrichment for laboratory mice: Exploring the effects of novelty and complexity

Providing structural enrichment is a widespread refinement method for laboratory rodents and other animals in captivity. So far, animal welfare research has mostly focused on the effect of increased complexity either by accumulating or combining different enrichment items. However, increasing...

Year Published: 2023Topics: Environmental EnrichmentAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Bohn, L., Bierbaum, L., Kästner, N. et al. 2023. Structural enrichment for laboratory mice: Exploring the effects of novelty and complexity. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10.

Comparison of a minimally invasive transthoracic approach and a surgical method for intrapleural injection of tumor cells in mice

Intrapleural injections can be used in mice to deliver therapeutic and diagnostic agents and to model human disease processes (for example, pleural fluid accumulation, malignant pleural disease, and lung cancers). In the context of establishing cancer models, minimally invasive methods...

Year Published: 2023Topics: Disease/Experimental Model, Drug/Substance AdministrationAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Xu, J. J., Lucero, M. Y., Herndon, N. L. et al. 2023. Comparison of a minimally invasive transthoracic approach and a surgical method for intrapleural injection of tumor cells in mice. Comparative Medicine 73(2), 120–126.

PiDose: An open-source system for accurate and automated oral drug administration to group-housed mice

Drug treatment studies in laboratory mice typically employ manual administration methods such as injection or gavage, which can be time-consuming to perform over long periods and cause substantial stress in animals. These stress responses may mask or enhance treatment effects,...

Year Published: 2020Topics: Drug/Substance AdministrationAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Woodard, C. L., Nasrallah, W. B., Samiei, B. V. et al. 2020. PiDose: An open-source system for accurate and automated oral drug administration to group-housed mice. Scientific Reports 10, 11584.

Nest material preference of wild mouse species in laboratory housing

Our research examined the nest-building characteristics of two mouse species native to Hungary, the mound-building mouse (Mus spicilegus) and the house mouse (Mus musculus), under laboratory housing conditions. In indoor housing, the nest-building material plays a very important role in...

Year Published: 2022Topics: Husbandry & ManagementAnimal Type: Mouse, Rodent

Citation: Bárdos, B., Nagy, I., Gerencsér, Z. et al. 2022. Nest material preference of wild mouse species in laboratory housing. Applied Sciences 12(11), 5750.