ArticleMolecular metabolism2025
Housing matters: Experimental variables shaping metabolism in obese mice.
Article in Molecular metabolism, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Towards optimizing the host response to biotics: a report of an International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics working group.Gut microbes · 2026Article
- Short- and Long-Term Effects of Social Isolation on Adult Murine Bone are Sex-Dependent.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The effects of housing temperature on mouse physiology and implications for disease modeling.Lab animal · 2026Review
- Neither rats nor mice have a broad thermoneutral zone: implications for physiological studies.Communications biology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
21 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Diet-induced obesity in mice is an important model for investigating host-diet interactions as well as dietary and pharmacological treatments of metabolic diseases. Experimental reproducibility is, however, a recurrent challenge. To determine key controllable experimental drivers of mouse metabolism, we distributed 338C57BL/6JBomTac mice (males and females) into six research units across two countries, divided them into a variety of housing conditions (i.e., diets, cage types, temperatures, group-housing vs. single-housing) and kept 26 reference mice at the vendor. We applied linear mixed models to rank the influence of each variable on metabolic phenotype (i.e., body weight gain, glucose intolerance, liver, and visceral adipose tissue weight). Group-housing was the most potent driver of metabolic dysfunction apart from sex and diet. Accordingly, single-housed mice exhibited reduced weight gain (∼50%), increased energy expenditure, and diminished respiratory exchange ratio concomitant with improved glucose tolerance (∼20%) compared to their group-housed counterparts. Our results may aid in clarifying the impact of experimental design and promote rational, transparent reporting to increase reproducibility.
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Registered trials
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