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. 
Corsetti, S., Natoli, E., Palme, R. et al. 2023. Instraspecific interactions decrease stress affecting welfare in shelter dogs: A comparison of four different housing conditions. Animals 13(11), 1828.

Shelters are stressful environments for domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Evaluating dogs’ welfare is crucial to improve their life condition and to promote a better management of shelters. We aimed at verifying which variables improved welfare...

Herlofson, E. A. G., Tavola, F., Engdahl, K. S. et al. 2023. Evaluation of primary wound healing and potential complications after perioperative infiltration with lidocaine without adrenaline in surgical incisions in dogs and cats. Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica 65(1), 21.

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...

Lee, G.-H., Jo, W., Kang, T.-K. et al. 2023. Assessment of stress caused by environmental changes for improving the welfare of laboratory beagle dogs. Animals 13(6), 1095.

Animal stress is influenced by environmental factors, yet only a few studies have evaluated the effects of environmental stress on captive dogs. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of environmental and social enrichment on...

Cuglovici, D. A. 2023. What can associations between emotional states and management-based measures teach us about shelter dogs’ welfare? Journal of Veterinary Behavior 69–70, 32–38.

It is crucial to understand the effect of living in a shelter on dog’s well-being. We hypothesized that mental states may indicate the presence of environmental stressors. The objective of this study was to determine...

Pinelli, C., Scandurra, A., Mastellone, V. et al. 2023. Unfamiliar human-induced social buffering effect in kennel-residing Australian Cattle Dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 267, 106039.

The “isolation syndrome” is a term used to describe the stress responses observed in highly social species when they lack social interactions. This syndrome affects various aspects of an individual’s welfare, including hormonal, behavioral, and...

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...

Lee, V. E., Arnott, G., Turner, S. P. 2022. Social behavior in farm animals: Applying fundamental theory to improve animal welfare. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 932217.

A fundamental understanding of behavior is essential to improving the welfare of billions of farm animals around the world. Despite living in an environment managed by humans, farm animals are still capable of making important...

Espadas-González, L., Usón-Casaús, J. M., Pastor-Sirvent, N. et al. 2022. Evaluation of the two-point ultrasound-guided transversus abdominis plane block for laparoscopic canine ovariectomy. Animals 12(24), 3556.

The transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block causes desensitization of the abdominal wall and peritoneum. Of all the approaches proposed to perform it, the two-injection-point TAP showed the best results in terms of the area reached...

Sartini, I., Łebkowska-Wieruszewska, B., Gbylik-Sikorska, M. et al. 2022. Acetaminophen pharmacokinetics in geese. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 260(12), 1–8.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the pharmacokinetics of acetaminophen (APAP) after single-dose IV and PO in the goose; to quantify APAP and its main metabolites in goose muscle, heart, lung, liver, and kidney; and to perform a...

Prior, H., Holbrook, M. 2021. Strategies to encourage the adoption of social housing during cardiovascular telemetry recordings in non-rodents. Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods 108, 106959.

The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) is working with industry to promote social housing during cardiovascular telemetry recordings within non-rodent safety pharmacology and toxicology studies. Following surveys...

Sørensen, D., Cloutier, S., Gaskill, B. (Eds.). 2021. Animal-centric Care and Management - Enhancing Refinement in Biomedical Research. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

The concept of the 3Rs (Refinement, Reduction and Replacement) has been used as a framework for improving the welfare of laboratory animals for the last half century. By establishing an animal-centric view on housing and...

Reinhardt, V. (ed.) 2020. It’s Okay to Cry - Discussions by the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum [LAREF], Volume V. Animal Welfare Institute, Washington, DC.

This is the 5th volume of selected discussions that took place on the electronic Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum between February 2016 and December 2019. The forum was created in October 2002; it allows...

Kendrick, J., Stow, R., Ibbotson, N. et al. 2020. A novel welfare and scientific approach to conducting dog metabolism studies allowing dogs to be pair housed. Laboratory Animals 54(6), 588-598.

Metabolism cages are designed to conduct absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) studies, enabling an ‘excretion balance’ scientific objective to be met. Historically, the design of dog metabolism cages has involved single housing. This type...

Acharya, R., Rault, J.-L. 2020. Risk factors for feather-damaging behavior in companion parrots: A social media study. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 40, 43-49.

Studies on the etiology of behavioral problems often involve interference in the animal's routine or reliance on owners' self-reports like surveys. Gathering data from videos posted on social media, a technique coined ‘video mining’, offers...

Rentsch, A. K., Rufener, C. B., Spadavecchia, C. et al. 2019. Laying hen’s mobility is impaired by keel bone fractures and does not improve with paracetamol treatment. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 216, 19-25.

Keel bone fractures (KBF) in laying hens pose a severe problem for animal welfare as they are likely to be associated with pain and suffering. Furthermore, they are suspected to hinder or restrict hens in...

Costa, J. H. C., Cantor, M. C., Adderley, N. A. et al. 2019. Key animal welfare issues in commercially raised dairy calves: social environment, nutrition, and painful procedures. Canadian Journal of Animal Science 99(4), 649-660.

Dairy calf welfare concerns are growing and new evidence suggests that the early life environment influences appropriate physical, behavioral, and cognitive development lasting into adulthood. This review highlights key evidence for the impacts of housing...

Nie, C., Ban, L., Ning, Z. et al. 2019. Feather colour affects the aggressive behaviour of chickens with the same genotype on the dominant white (I) locus. PLOS ONE 14(5), e0215921.

Aggression in chickens is a serious economic and animal welfare issue in poultry farming. Pigmentation traits have been documented to be associated with animal behaviour. Chicken pecking behaviour has been found to be related to...

Lucrezia Costa, G., Nastasi, B., Spadola, F. et al. 2019. Effect of levobupivacaine, administered intraperitoneally, on physiological variables and on intrasurgery and postsurgery pain in dogs undergoing ovariohysterectomy. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 30, 33-36.

The aim of this study was to evaluate intraoperative and postoperative efficacy and cardiovascular effects of levobupivacaine compared with bupivacaine, administered intraperitoneally in dogs undergoing ovariohysterectomy surgery. Thirty female dogs were divided into three groups...

Miller, K. A., Hill, N. J., Carrasco, S. E. et al. 2019. Pharmacokinetics and safety of intramuscular meloxicam in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). JAALAS 58(5), 589–593.

Meloxicam is the most frequently used NSAID in birds; however, its elimination t1/2 is highly variable among species. Because zebra finches that require analgesia could benefit from receiving meloxicam, we performed a pharmacokinetic study involving...

Coke, C., Skoumbourdis, E., Rodgers, J. C. et al. 2018. Blunting/cutting canines of adult male monkeys: A discussion by the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum. Animal Technology & Welfare 17(2), 105-107.

"When you keep adult Rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) males, adult Cynomolgus (Macaca fascicularis) males or adult Vervet males (Chlorocebus pygerythrus), in the same enclosure, is it advisable to have the canines of the males blunted...

Langley, E. J. G., van Horik, J. O., Whiteside, M. A. et al. 2018. Individuals in larger groups are more successful on spatial discrimination tasks. Animal Behaviour 142, 87-93.

To understand how natural selection may act on cognitive processes, it is necessary to reliably determine interindividual variation in cognitive abilities. However, an individual's performance in a cognitive test may be influenced by the social...

Koistinen, T., Raatikainen, S., Sepponen, J. et al. 2018. Resting preferences and welfare of Finnraccoon (Nyctereutes procyonoides ussuriensis) females housed in various housing conditions in winter. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 207, 129-137.

Raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides ussuriensis) is the only canid species using facultative passive wintering strategy. The aim of the present study is to document the behaviour and welfare of the farmed variant of the species...

Torad, F. A., Hassan, E. A. 2018. Sedative, analgesic, and behavioral effects of nalbuphine-xylazine and nalbuphine-midazolam combinations in dogs. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 28, 40-45.

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the sedative, analgesic, and behavioral effects of nalbuphine-xylazine (NX) and nalbuphine-midazolam (NM) combinations for neuroleptanalgesia in dogs. A prospective randomized crossover study was done on six...

Bailey, C. 2017. Refinements in housing during data capture in long term Safety Pharmacology dogs. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(2), 147-149.

Dogs are individually housed when collecting data for ECG studies to avoid any cross talk between transmitted signals (generally for a 24 hour recording period). Each implant is set at a certain frequency which transmits...

Ludwig, S. C., Kapetanopoulos, K., Kotrschal, K. et al. 2017. Effects of mate separation in female and social isolation in male free-living Greylag geese on behavioural and physiological measures. Behavioural Processes 138, 134-141.

The presence of a social partner may significantly contribute to coping with stressful events, whereas dyadic separation generally increases glucocorticoid levels and, thereby, might also affect immune function and health. To study the covariation between...