T hese recommendations are primarily intended to standardize health monitoring programmes and reporting. In this way they may also help to standardize the microbiological quality of animals. However, it is not a requirement of these recommendations that animals tested are free from all of the microorganisms listed.Health monitoring is a complex issue. T herefore, it is recommended that a person with suf®cient understanding of the principles of health monitoring (FELASA Category D, Nevalainen e t a l. 1999 ) be identi®ed as the individual responsible for devising and maintai ning a health monitoring policy for the facility.It should be noted that health monitoring is not con®ned to laboratory reporting. T here should also be engendered a culture of communicat ion between anim al technicians, facility managers, veterinarians and researchers so that observed abnormalities in breeding anim als and experimental data can rapidly be evaluated and appropriate action taken.Animals that are standardized as much as possible are important prerequisites for reproducible anim al experiments.

The microbiological quality of experimental animals can critically influence animal welfare and the validity and reproducibility of research data. It is therefore important for breeding and experimental facilities to establish a laboratory animal health monitoring (HM) programme as an integrated part of any quality assurance system. FELASA has published recommendations for the HM of rodent and rabbit colonies in breeding and experimental units (Nicklas et al. Laboratory Animals, 2002), with the intention of harmonizing HM programmes. As stated in the preamble, these recommendations need to be adapted periodically to meet current developments in laboratory animal medicine. Accordingly, previous recommendations have been revised and shall be replaced by the present recommendations. These recommendations are aimed at all breeders and users of laboratory mice, rats, Syrian hamsters, guinea pigs and rabbits as well as diagnostic laboratories. They describe essential aspects of HM, such as the choice of agents, selection of animals and tissues for testing, frequency of sampling, commonly used test methods, interpretation of results and HM reporting. Compared with previous recommendations, more emphasis is put on the role of a person with sufficient understanding of the principles of HM, opportunistic agents, the use of sentinel animals (particularly under conditions of cage-level containment) and the interpretation and reporting of HM results. Relevant agents, testing frequencies and literature references are updated. Supplementary information on specific agents and the number of animals to be monitored and an example of a HM programme description is provided in the appendices.

Monitoring the health of research animals is an essential part of the research process and helps to ensure that experiments yield reliable and reproducible results. The Federation of European Laboratory Animal Science Associations (FELASA) is one organization that accredits and evaluates health monitoring programs and laboratories involved with health monitoring. In this article, the authors (who are members of the FELASA working group Accreditation Board for Health Monitoring) describe the guidelines of the FELASA health monitoring accreditation process. The ultimate goal of this accreditation program is to make health monitoring reports more thorough and reliable, thereby increasing the standardization of health monitoring of laboratory animals.

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Environmental factors, such as cigarette smoking or lung infections, may influence chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) progression by modifying the respiratory tract microbiome. However, whether the disease itself induces or maintains dysbiosis remains undefined. In this longitudinal study, we investigated the oropharyngeal microbiota composition and disease progression of mice (in cages of 5–10 mice per cage) before, during and up to 3 months after chronic cigarette smoke exposure or exposure to room air for 6 months. Cigarette smoke exposure induced pulmonary emphysema measurable at the end of exposure for 6 months, as well as 3 months following smoke exposure cessation. Using both classical culture methods and 16S rRNA sequencing, we observed that cigarette smoke exposure altered the relative composition of the oropharyngeal microbiota and reduced its diversity (P <0.001). More than 60 taxa were substantially reduced after 6 months of smoke exposure (P <0.001) However, oropharyngeal microbiota disordering was reversed 3 months after smoke exposure cessation and no significant difference was observed compared to age-matched control mice. The effects of lung infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae on established smoke-induced emphysema and on the oropharyngeal microbiota were also evaluated. Inoculation with S. pneumoniae induced lung damage and altered the microbiota composition for a longer time compared to control groups infected but not previously exposed to smoke (P=0.01). Our data demonstrate effects of cigarette smoke and pneumococcus infection leading to altered microbiota and emphysema development. The reversal of the disordering of the microbiota composition, but not lung damage, following smoke exposure cessation and after clearance of infection suggest that changes in lung structure are not sufficient to sustain a disordered microbiota in mice. Whether changes in the airway microbiota contribute to inducing emphysema requires further investigation.