Behavioral Methods for Severity Assessment

Kahnau, Pia; Habedank, Anne; Diederich, Kai; Lewejohann, Lars

doi:10.3390/ani10071136

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 82 publications

(117 reference statements)

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“…In order to evaluate the suitability of enrichment items for enhancing animal welfare of laboratory animals, different approaches are feasible. Of special importance are animal centric strategies [ 28 ] to investigate how different items are perceived by the animals themselves [ 5 , 29 , 30 ]. A very promising approach is to "ask" the animals by performing home cage-based preference studies [ 31 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of different types of enrichment - their usage and effect on home cage behavior in female mice

et al. 2021

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Numerous studies ascertained positive effects of enriched environments on the well-being of laboratory animals including behavioral, physiological and neurochemical parameters. Conversely, such conclusions imply impaired animal welfare and health in barren husbandry conditions. Moreover, inappropriate housing of laboratory animals may deteriorate the quality of scientific data. Recommendations for housing laboratory animals stipulate that cages should be enriched to mitigate adverse effects of barren housing. In this context, it is not only unclear what exactly is meant by enrichment, but also how the animals themselves interact with the various items on offer. Focal animal observation of female C57BL/6J mice either housed in conventional (CON) or enriched (ENR) conditions served to analyze the impact of enriching housing on welfare related behavior patterns including stereotypical, maintenance, active social, and inactive behaviors. CON conditions resembled current usual housing of laboratory mice, whereas ENR mice received varying enrichment items including foraging, housing and structural elements, and a running disc. Active and inactive use of these elements was quantitatively assessed. CON mice showed significantly more inactive and stereotypical behavior than ENR mice. ENR mice frequently engaged with all enrichment elements, whereby riddles to obtain food reward and the running disc preferably served for active interactions. Offering a second level resulted in high active and inactive interactions. Structural elements fixed at the cagetop were least attractive for the mice. Overall, the presented data underline the positive welfare benefits of enrichment and that mice clearly differentiate between distinct enrichment types, demonstrating that the perspective of the animals themselves should also be taken into account when specifying laboratory housing conditions. This is particularly important, as the ensuring of animal welfare is an essential prerequisite for reliable, reproducible, and scientifically meaningful results.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of different types of enrichment - their usage and effect on home cage behavior in female mice

et al. 2021

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“…Outside of experimental tasks, animals have exhibited preferences for more complex options with respects to positive reinforcement training ( e.g ., Schapiro & Lambeth, 2007 ), environmental parameters ( e.g ., supplementary light: Buchanan-Smith & Badihi, 2012 ), enrichment ( e.g ., Hobbiesiefken et al, 2021 ), and even determining the type and/or whether to cooperate with medical treatment ( e.g ., Magden et al, 2013 , 2016 ; Webb, Hau & Schapiro, 2018 ). Previous work has advocated for the use of preference testing to guide animal welfare assessment, particularly for determining the value of different environment-based items to animals ( Habedank et al, 2018 ; Kahnau et al, 2020 , 2022 ). Presently offering laboratory animals’ choices between other welfare conditions, such as experimental procedures and husbandry practices, has not been conducted to our knowledge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Choice-based severity scale (CSS): assessing the relative severity of procedures from a laboratory animal’s perspective

Cassidy,

Treue,

Gail

et al. 2024

PeerJ

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One primary goal of laboratory animal welfare science is to provide a comprehensive severity assessment of the experimental and husbandry procedures or conditions these animals experience. The severity, or degree of suffering, of these conditions experienced by animals are typically scored based on anthropocentric assumptions. We propose to (a) assess an animal’s subjective experience of condition severity, and (b) not only rank but scale different conditions in relation to one another using choice-based preference testing. The Choice-based Severity Scale (CSS) utilizes animals’ relative preferences for different conditions, which are compared by how much reward is needed to outweigh the perceived severity of a given condition. Thus, this animal-centric approach provides a common scale for condition severity based on the animal’s perspective. To assess and test the CSS concept, we offered three opportunistically selected male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) choices between two conditions: performing a cognitive task in a typical neuroscience laboratory setup (laboratory condition) versus the monkey’s home environment (cage condition). Our data show a shift in one individual’s preference for the cage condition to the laboratory condition when we changed the type of reward provided in the task. Two additional monkeys strongly preferred the cage condition over the laboratory condition, irrespective of reward amount and type. We tested the CSS concept further by showing that monkeys’ choices between tasks varying in trial duration can be influenced by the amount of reward provided. Altogether, the CSS concept is built upon laboratory animals’ subjective experiences and has the potential to de-anthropomorphize severity assessments, refine experimental protocols, and provide a common framework to assess animal welfare across different domains.

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“…Such scores often provide the basis for subsequent actions if predefined humane endpoints are reached 19 , 20 . Additionally, evaluating innate behavior like burrowing and nesting activity has become a cornerstone of assessing animal well-being, as they are reduced in severe distress 21 – 23 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robustness of a multivariate composite score when evaluating distress of animal models for gastrointestinal diseases

Talbot

Kumstel

Schulz

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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The fundament of an evidence-based severity assessment in laboratory animal science is reliable distress parameters. Many readouts are used to evaluate and determine animal distress and the severity of experimental procedures. Therefore, we analyzed four distinct parameters like the body weight, burrowing behavior, nesting, and distress score in the four gastrointestinal animal models (pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), pancreatitis, CCl4 intoxication, and bile duct ligation (BDL)). Further, we determined the parameters’ robustness in various experimental subgroups due to slight variations like drug treatment or telemeter implantations. We used non-parametric bootstrapping to get robust estimates and 95% confidence intervals for the experimental groups. It was found that the performance of the readout parameters is model-dependent and that the distress score is prone to experimental variation. On the other hand, we also found that burrowing and nesting can be more robust than, e.g., the body weight when evaluating PDA. However, the body weight still was highly robust in BDL, pancreatitis, and CCl4 intoxication. To address the complex nature of the multi-dimensional severity space, we used the Relative Severity Assessment (RELSA) procedure to combine multiple distress parameters into a score and mapped the subgroups and models against a defined reference set obtained by telemeter implantation. This approach allowed us to compare the severity of individual animals in the experimental subgroups using the maximum achieved severity (RELSAmax). With this, the following order of severity was found for the animal models: CCl4 < PDA ≈ Pancreatitis < BDL. Furthermore, the robustness of the RELSA procedure and outcome was externally validated with a reference set from another laboratory also obtained from telemeter implantation. Since the RELSA procedure reflects the multi-dimensional severity information and is highly robust in estimating the quantitative severity within and between models, it can be deemed a valuable tool for laboratory animal severity assessment.

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Behavioral Methods for Severity Assessment

Cited by 8 publications

References 82 publications

Evaluation of different types of enrichment - their usage and effect on home cage behavior in female mice

Evaluation of different types of enrichment - their usage and effect on home cage behavior in female mice

Choice-based severity scale (CSS): assessing the relative severity of procedures from a laboratory animal’s perspective

Robustness of a multivariate composite score when evaluating distress of animal models for gastrointestinal diseases

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