ArticleAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI2021
Additional Assessment of Fecal Corticosterone Metabolites Improves Visual Rating in the Evaluation of Stress Responses of Laboratory Rats.
Article in Animals : an open access journal from MDPI, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessment of Behavioral, Clinical, and Histological Outcomes in Sprague-Dawley Rats Housed in Enriched Colony Cages Versus Conventional Pair Housing over 28 Days.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Safety Evaluation and Biodistribution of Fetal Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells-Derived Small Extracellular Vesicles in Sprague Dawley Rats.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- A non-invasive approach to awake mouse fMRI compatible with multi-modal techniques.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Rat Grimace Scale as a Method to Evaluate Animal Welfare, Nociception, and Quality of the Euthanasia Method of Wistar Rats.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Review of Rat (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- Generalizability, Robustness and Replicability When Evaluating Wellbeing of Laboratory Mice with Various Methods.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- The impact of tethered recording techniques on activity and sleep patterns in rats.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The neurobiology of pain and facial movements in rodents: Clinical applications and current research.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2022Review
- Maternal Deprivation Increased Vulnerability to Depression in Adult Rats Through DRD2 Promoter Methylation in the Ventral Tegmental Area.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Since animal experiments cannot be completely avoided, the pain, suffering, and distress of laboratory animals must be minimized. To this end, a major prerequisite is reliable assessment of pain and distress. Usually, evaluation of animal welfare is done by visual inspection and score sheets. However, relatively little is known about whether standardized, but subjective, score sheets are able to reliably reflect the status of the animals. The current study aimed to compare visual assessment scores and changes in body weight with concentrations of fecal corticosterone metabolites (FCMs) in a neuroscientific experimental setup. Additionally, effects of refinement procedures were investigated. Eight male adult Sprague-Dawley rats underwent several experimental interventions, including electroencephalograph electrode implantation and subsequent recording, positron emission tomography (PET), and sleep deprivation (SD) by motorized activity wheels. Additional 16 rats were either used as controls without any treatment or to evaluate refinement strategies. Stress responses were determined on a daily basis by means of measuring FCMs, body weight, and evaluation of the animals' welfare by standardized score sheets. Surgery provoked a significant elevation of FCM levels for up to five days. Increases in FCMs due to PET procedures or SD in activity wheels were also highly significant, while visual assessment scores did not indicate elevated stress levels and body weights remained constant. Visual assessment scores correlate with neither changes in body weight nor increases in FCM levels. Habituation procedures to activity wheels used for SD had no impact on corticosterone release. Our results revealed that actual score sheets for visual assessment of animal welfare did not mirror physiological stress responses assessed by FCM measurements. Moreover, small changes in body weight did not correlate with FCM concentration either. In conclusion, as visual assessment is a method allowing immediate interventions on suffering animals to alleviate burden, timely stress assessment in experimental rodents via score sheets should be ideally complemented by validated objective measures (e.g., fecal FCM measured by well-established assays for reliable detection of FCMs). This will complete a comprehensive appraisal of the animals' welfare status in a retrospective manner and refine stressor procedures in the long run.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.