A Stanford researcher has won accolades for a research paper that could help ease the lives of millions of laboratory mice – and improve the outcomes of research studies.
Joseph Garner, PhD, an associate professor of comparative medicine, and his colleagues observed that mice are routinely housed in cold conditions, which put stress on the animals. The mice compensate with physiologic changes that can skew the results of laboratory studies. For instance, temperature has been shown to affect immune function and tumor development in mice, among other factors. So cold stress in mice raises concerns not only for animal welfare but also for science.
Garner and his colleague, Briana Gaskill, PhD, proposed a simple solution: Give the animals some nesting material, and they’ll build a cozy home to regulate their temperatures. These comfy mice would be more physiologically comparable to humans, making them better research subjects, the researchers said. But one obstacle to adopting this simple solution was the question of how much nesting material is enough? In their prize-winning experiment, the researchers asked the mice how much nesting material they needed to give up a warm cage for a cold cage with a nest. The scientists found that between 6 and 10 grams of nesting material could effectively reduce cold stress in the animals – a standard now starting to be adopted in labs around the world.
The paper, published in 2012 in PLoS One, won a high commendation recently from the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research, a leading, UK-based scientific organization that supports research which aims to minimize the need for animals in research and improve animal welfare.
The group said that the research results “have the potential to positively impact the welfare of millions of laboratory mice all over the world.”
Garner and Gaskill both traveled to London to receive the prize.
Previously: Stanford students design "enrichments" for lions, giraffe and kinkajou at the San Francisco Zoo, Nesting improves mouse well-being, could aid research studies and Stanford researcher's easy solution to problem of drug testing in mice
Photo, which originally appeared in Stanford Medicine magazine, by Brianna Gaskill
