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. 
d’Isa, R., Gerlai, R. 2023. Designing animal-friendly behavioral tests for neuroscience research: The importance of an ethological approach. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 16, 1090248.

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)...

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...

Jorge, S., Félix, L., Costas, B. et al. 2023. Housing conditions affect adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) behavior but not their physiological status. Animals 13(6), 1120.

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...

Morton, D. B. 2023. A model framework for the estimation of animal “suffering”: Its use in predicting and retrospectively assessing the impact of experiments on animals. Animals 13(5), 800.

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...

Alef, R., Blaser, R. E. 2023. Social group during housing and testing modulates the effect of ethanol on zebrafish (Danio rerio) behavior. Behavioural Processes 209, 104877.

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are a popular model organism in behavioral pharmacology research due to many genetic and neurological similarities with humans. As a social species, the presence (or absence) of conspecifics during housing and testing...

Attokaren, M. K., Jeong, N., Blanpain, L. et al. 2023. BrainWAVE: A flexible method for noninvasive stimulation of brain rhythms across species. ENeuro 10(2) ENEURO.0257-22.2022.

Rhythmic neural activity, which coordinates brain regions and neurons to achieve multiple brain functions, is impaired in many diseases. Despite the therapeutic potential of driving brain rhythms, methods to noninvasively target deep brain regions are...

Mandour, A. S., Farag, A., Helal, M. A. Y. et al. 2023. Non-invasive assessment of the intraventricular pressure using novel color M-mode echocardiography in animal studies: Current status and future perspectives in veterinary medicine. Animals 13(15), 2452.

The assessment of diastolic function has received great interest in order to comprehend its crucial role in the pathophysiology of heart failure and for the early identification of cardiac events. Silent changes in the intraventricular...

Schilling, A.-K., Mazzamuto, M. V., Romeo, C. 2022. A review of non-invasive sampling in wildlife disease and health research: What’s new? Animals 12(13), 1719.

In the last decades, wildlife diseases and the health status of animal populations have gained increasing attention from the scientific community as part of a One Health framework. Furthermore, the need for non-invasive sampling methods...

Serrano, C., Antonio, J. 2022. Ultrasound guided surgery as a refinement tool in oncology research. Animals 12(23), 3445.

Refinement is one of the ethical pillars of the use of animals in research. Ultrasonography is currently used in human medicine as a surgical tool for guided biopsies and this idea can be applied to...

Rácz, A., Allan, B., Dwyer, T. et al. 2021. Identification of individual zebrafish (Danio rerio): A refined protocol for VIE tagging whilst considering animal welfare and the principles of the 3Rs. Animals 11(3), 616.

In aquatic ecology, studies have commonly employed a tagging technique known as visible implant elastomer (VIE). This method has not been widely adopted by the zebrafish research community and also lacks refinement with regard to...

Young, T., Whiteside, T., Locklear, J. 2020. What is your tattoo ink telling you? Laboratory Animal Science Professional 8(2) (March/April), 62-65.

Tattooing traumatizes the skin, which can result in microbial infections with the severity ranging from minor to life-threating septicemia. Additionally, the metals in colored tattoo ink are known to cause dermal inflammation in some people...

Zemanova, M. A. 2020. Towards more compassionate wildlife research through the 3Rs principles: Moving from invasive to noninvasive methods. Wildlife Biology 2020(1), no page numbers.

Research in ecology and wildlife biology remains crucial for increasing our knowledge and improving species management and conservation in the midst of the current biodiversity crisis. However, obtaining information on population status often involves invasive...

Lawrence, M. J., Raby, G. D., Teffer, A. K. et al. 2020. Best practices for non-lethal blood sampling of fish via the caudal vasculature. Journal of Fish Biology 97(1), 4–15.

Blood sampling through the caudal vasculature is a widely used technique in fish biology for investigating organismal health and physiology. In live fishes, it can provide a quick, easy and relatively non‐invasive method for obtaining...

McMurray, C., Allen, N., Hook, S. et al. 2018. I3S software as a refinement technique to identify individuals within a captive Scyliorhinus canula population. Animal Technology and Welfare 17(3), 204-205 (IAT Congress 2018 Poster Presentation).

Demarking individual animals within a group is often required in research. However, the process of invasive tagging induces stress and if a tag becomes detached it may wound the animal and/or prevent identification. Photo identification...

Ruberto, T., Clément, R. J. G., Spinello, C. et al. 2018. The tagging procedure of visible implant elastomers influences zebrafish individual and social behavior. Zebrafish 15(5), 433-444.

One commonly used method to preserve individual identity in the study of social behavior of zebrafish is through silicone-based visible implant elastomers (VIEs), which represent a safe and durable tagging procedure. While the effects of...

Hopper, L. D. 2016. Automated microsampling technologies and enhancements in the 3Rs. ILAR Journal 57(2), 166-177.

Data collected in vivo is essential for advising decisions on drug screening and development and basic research, and animal models are used extensively for acquiring experimental measurements. Traditionally, collection of specimens has been invasive, stressful...

O'Connell, C. P., Leurs, G. 2016. A minimally invasive technique to assess several life-history characteristics of the endangered great hammerhead shark Sphyrna mokarran. Journal of Fish Biology 88(3), 1257-1264.

A dorsal-fin photo-identification technique paired with a non-invasive parallel laser photogrammetry technique was used to non-invasively identify individual Sphyrna mokarran over time. Based on the data collected over a duration of 59 days, 16 different...

Reinhardt, V. (ed.) 2013. Compassion Makes a Difference - Discussions by the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum [LAREF], Volume III. Animal Welfare Institute, Washington, DC.

This is the third volume of discussions that took place on the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum (LAREF). This forum is dedicated to the exchange of personal experiences of refining the conditions under which...

Van Loo, P., Skoumbourdis, E., Reinhardt, V. 2006. Postsurgical pairing: A discussion by the Refinement & Enrichment Forum. Animal Technology and Welfare 5(1), 17-19.

Our experience-based discussion suggests that social animals benefit from compatible companionship during post-operative recovery. The traditional practice of keeping animals alone in an unfamiliar environment after surgery increases the subjects surgery-associated stress. Providing a familiar...