Effects of group housing on ECG assessment in conscious cynomolgus monkeys

Social housing of non-rodents during cardiovascular recordings in safety pharmacology and toxicology studies

“…Studies showing no significant difference in cardiovascular data in socially housed compared with individually housed animals have been published in dogs ( Kearney, Appleby, Kieper, & Atterson, 2016 (this issue); Prior et al, 2015 , Sadekova et al, 2015 , Sadekova et al, 2016 (this issue)) and cynomolgus monkeys ( Kaiser et al, 2015 , Tichenor et al, 2016 (this issue)). In contrast, other publications indicate that lower heart rates were obtained in socially housed cynomolgus monkeys ( Bétat et al, 2014 , Kreckler et al, 2015 , Xing et al, 2015 ) and dogs ( Klumpp et al, 2006 , Ward, 2009 ) compared to individually housed animals. A change in heart rate for socially housed animals could be interpreted a number of ways.…”

“…This separation of animals is considered by some to be justified to allow conduct of the specific scientific procedure (telemetry recording), such that the overall objectives of the experiment can be achieved. Although animals are usually acclimatised to these instances of periodic isolation, this can contribute to increases in heart rate ( Xing, Lu, Hu, Wang, Zhao, Zheng, Schofield, Oldman, Adkins, Yu, Platz, Ren, & Skinner, 2015 ) which may impact study data. However, with the goal of social housing as default, the industry has come together to investigate ways to move towards these preferred conditions.…”

“…There is also a perception that recordings from socially housed animals may be more variable than (or otherwise distinct from) single-housed animals due to increased interactions with pen/cagemates, leading to a decreased sensitivity (statistical power) to detect changes in cardiovascular parameters. Nevertheless, some companies have started to validate processes and approaches for running safety pharmacology and toxicology studies using animals grouped together in pairs, threes or fours for the duration of the study ( Kaiser et al, 2015 , Prior et al, 2015 , Xing et al, 2015 ), in addition to those companies for whom this has been the standard for many years ( Klumpp, Trautmann, Markert, & Guth, 2006 ).…”

The shifting landscape of safety pharmacology in 2015

“…The authors use several different social housing paradigms and evaluate the influence of that social situation on heart rate and the EKG. Xing et al (2015) provide a very informative paper that is similarly well timed regarding optimizing animal housing conditions during the conduct of safety pharmacology studies. The paper nicely reviews EKG data obtained from jacketed male and female primates and the effects of moxifloxacin, the clinically used positive thorough QT study (TQT) control drug.…”

Good Research Practice: Lessons from Animal Care and Use

“…The stability of baseline cardiovascular parameters was affected by the arrangements of pens and the social setting in dogs implanted with telemetry devices (Klumpp et al 2006). Similarly, social enrichment has been reported to affect cardiovascular function at resting state in monkeys (Xing et al 2015). Housing temperature affects the growth rate of tumors in mice (Hylander and Repasky 2016;Kokolus et al 2013).…”