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. 
Hocking, A. J., Elliot, D., Hua, J. et al. 2018. Administering fixed oral doses of curcumin to rats through voluntary consumption. JAALAS 57(5), 508–512.

Curcumin, a polyphenol derived from turmeric, has a wide variety of therapeutic benefits including antiinflammatory, antioxidative, and chemopreventative effects. Oral gavage is widely performed to administer curcumin in laboratory rodents in several experimental models. Although...

Raya, J., Neves Girardi , C. E., Hipólide, D. C. 2019. Corticosterone assimilation by a voluntary oral administration in palatable food to rats. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 22(1), 37-41.

Drug delivery in research on nonhuman animals in the laboratory is still challenging because it is usually invasive and stressful. Stress-free voluntary oral drug administration in water lacks precise control of dose and timing of...

Byrd, R., Boyd, S., Buckmaster, C. 2018. Rat thunder jacket— A zen experience. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 6(3) (September), 55-57.

Germ-free rats are fairly uncommon, relative to germ-free mice, and restraining these animals safely and effectively for compound administration and blood collection can be challenging. There are many commercially available varieties of restraint devices, but...

Gjendal, K., Lund Ottesen, J., Bratbo Sørensen, D. 2018. Does colour matter? Preference of mice for different colours of the house mouse igloo: An observational study. Scandinavian Journal of Laboratory Animal Science 44(6).

It is argued that mice have poor colour vision and are insensitive to the colour red, which they in theory perceive as dark. Therefore, the red tinted Bio-Serv Mouse Igloo® is used to provide mice...

Castelhano-Carlos, M. J., Baumans, V., Sousa, N. 2017. PhenoWorld: Addressing animal welfare in a new paradigm to house and assess rat behaviour. Laboratory Animals 51(1), 36-43.

The use of animals is essential in biomedical research. The laboratory environment where the animals are housed has a major impact on them throughout their lives and influences the outcome of animal experiments. Therefore, there...

Brenneis, C., Westhof, A., Holschbach, J. et al. 2017. Automated tracking of motion and body weight for objective monitoring of rats in colony housing. JAALAS 56(1), 18-31.

Living together in large social communities within an enriched environment stimulates self-motivated activity in rats. We developed a modular housing system in which a single unit can accommodate as many as 48 rats and contains...

Polissidis, A., Zelelak, S., Nikita, M. et al. 2017. Assessing the exploratory and anxiety-related behaviors of mice. Do different caging systems affect the outcome of behavioral tests? Physiology & Behavior 177, 68-73.

Ample studies have shown that housing can affect the health, welfare and behavior of mice and therefore, the outcomes of certain experiments. The aim of this study was to investigate if three widely used housing...

Barker, T. H., Bobrovskaya, L., Howarth, G. S. et al. 2017. Female rats display fewer optimistic responses in a judgment bias test in the absence of a physiological stress response. Physiology & Behavior 173, 124-131.

Metabolic cages are a type of housing used in biomedical research. Metabolic cage housing has been demonstrated to elicit behavioural and physiological changes in rodents housed within them. The nature of this effect has been...

Jones, T., Robinson, M., Leach, M. et al. 2017. Ultrasonic vocalisation as a measure of positive welfare in rats. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(2), 127-129.

Studies of animal welfare in laboratory animals have historically relied on the measurement of negative indicators rather than the assessment of positive indicators of welfare. Practical methods of welfare assessment are required to allow refinement...

Pasquarelli, N., Voehringer, P., Henke, J. et al. 2017. Effect of a change in housing conditions on body weight, behavior and brain neurotransmitters in male C57BL/6J mice. Behavioural Brain Research 333, 35-42.

The development of modern housing regimes such as individually ventilated cage (IVC) systems has become very popular and attractive in order to reduce spreading of pathogenic organisms and to lower the risk to develop a...

Tucker, R. D. 2017. Woodchuck College. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 5(2) (June), 33-36.

Marmota monax is a valuable laboratory animal species used in studies of Hepatitis B virus (HBV), food intake, obesity, hibernation, and circannual cycles. This article describes the woodchuck’s (also known as groundhog) natural behavior and...

Makowska, I. J., Weary, D. M. 2016. Differences in anticipatory behaviour between rats (Rattus norvegicus) housed in standard versus semi-naturalistic laboratory environments. PLOS ONE 11(1), e0147595.

Laboratory rats are usually kept in relatively small cages, but research has shown that they prefer larger and more complex environments. The physiological, neurological and health effects of standard laboratory housing are well established, but...

Karrberg, L., Andersson, L., Kastenmayer, R. J. et al. 2016. Refinement of habituation procedures in diet-induced obese mice. Laboratory Animals 50(5), 397-399.

Orogastric gavage, while a common method for delivering experimental substances in mice, has been shown to induce stress. To minimize the associated stress with this procedure, sham gavage prior to the start of experiment is...

Whittaker, A. L., Lymn, K. A., Howarth, G. S. 2016. Effects of metabolic cage housing on rat behavior and performance in the social interaction test. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 19(4), 363-374.

Although the metabolic cage is commonly used for housing nonhuman animals in the laboratory, it has been recognized as constituting a unique stressor. Such an environment would be expected to affect behavioral change in animals...

Byrd, C. P., Winnicker, C., Gaskill, B. N. 2016. Instituting dark-colored cover to improve central space use within guinea pig enclosure. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 19(4), 408-413.

Domestic guinea pigs (Cavia aperea f. porcellus) in laboratories have been shown to actively avoid the centers of their cages. This experiment tested a novel, dark-colored “shader” placed over the central portion of a cage...

Allen, K. P., Dwinell, M. R., Zappa, A. M. et al. 2016. Rat breeding parameters according to floor space available in cage. JAALAS 55(1), 21–24.

The cage floor space recommended for a female rat with a litter is greater in the 8th edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals than in previous editions. As a...

Makowska, I. J., Weary, D. M. 2016. The importance of burrowing, climbing and standing upright for laboratory rats. Royal Society Open Science 3, 160136.

Standard laboratory cages prevent rats (Rattus norvegicus) from performing many behaviours that they perform in the wild, but little is known about how this may affect their welfare. The aims of this study were (i)...

O'Keefe, S. 2016. Non-human primate housing facility at Newcastle University. Animal Technology and Welfare 15(2), 131-132.

Monkeys first arrived in the Comparative Biology Centre (CBC) at Newcastle University in 2000. They were housed in three small separate units consisting of steel and wooden cages. In 2011 a decision was made to...

Gaskill, B. N., Pritchett-Corning, K. R. 2015. Effect of cage space on behavior and reproduction in CRl:CD(SD) and BN/Crl laboratory rats. JAALAS 54(5), 497-506.

The 2011 Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals contains recommendations regarding the amount of cage space for mothers with litters. Literature on cage-space use in breeding rats is sparse. We hypothesized that...

Pritchett-Corning, K. R., Gaskill, B. N. 2015. Lack of negative effects on Syrian hamsters and Mongolian gerbils housed in the same secondary enclosure. JAALAS 54(3), 261-266.

In cases where different species might be housed in the same room or secondary enclosure, the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals recommends that the animals should be behaviorally compatible and have...

Giral, M., Amengol, C., Sanchez-Gomez, S. et al. 2015. Effects of changing to individually ventilated caging on guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus). JAALAS 54(3), 267-272.

The goal of this study was to evaluate the effect of changing to IVC housing on guinea pigs by recording several physiologic parameters in guinea pigs housed sequentially in open-top cages (OTC) and IVC. To...

Wheeler, R. R., Swan, M. P., Hickman, D. L. 2015. Effect of multilevel laboratory rat caging system on the well-being of the singly-housed Sprague Dawley rat. Laboratory Animals 49(1), 10-19.

Current regulations emphasize that good husbandry practices allow animals to engage in species appropriate postural adjustments without touching the enclosure walls. This study evaluated the well-being of rats housed in a commercially available multilevel rat...

Maher, R. L., Barbash, S. M., Lynch, D. V. et al. 2015. Group housing and nest building only slightly ameliorate the cold stress of typical housing in female C57BL/6J mice. American Journal of Physiology 308(12), R1070-R1079.

Huddling and nest building are two methods of behavioral thermoregulation used by mice under cold stress. In the laboratory, mice are typically housed at an ambient temperature (Ta) of 20°C, well below the lower end...

Bayne, K. A., Beaver, B. V., Mench, J. A. et al. 2015. Laboratory animal behavior. In: Laboratory Animal Medicine, 3rd edition. Fox, J. G., Anderson, L., Otto, G., et al. (eds). Elsevier, Inc., Amsterdam, NL. pp. 1617-1651.

The study of laboratory animal behavior has increased steadily over the last decade, with expanding emphasis on a variety of commonly used species. In the United States, this trend was initially focused on species for...

Murphy, S., Fortner, J., Adusumilli, S. 2014. A comparison of soiled bedding densities and stress in sentinel mice. American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [AALAS] Meeting Official Program, 609. (Abstract #P225).

Sentinel animals are used to monitor the health status of rodents used in research. It is important to screen for potentially pathogenic viruses, parasites, and bacterial organisms to detect and rapidly respond to unwanted pathogens...