Trends in animal experimentation.

INTRODUCTION

The search of the understanding of etiological factors, mechanisms and treatment of the diseases has been taking to the development of several animal models in the last decades.

OBJECTIVE

To discuss aspects related to animal models of experimentation, animal choice and current trends in this field in our country. In addition, this study evaluated the frequency of experimental articles in medical journals.

METHODS

Five Brazilian journals indexed by LILACS, SciELO, MEDLINE, and recently incorporate for Institute for Scientific Information Journal of Citation Reports were analyzed. All the papers published in those journals, between 2007 and 2008, that used animal models, were selected based on the abstracts.

RESULTS

Of the total of 832 articles published in the period, 92 (11.1%) experimentation papers were selected. The number of experimental articles ranged from 5.2% to 17.9% of the global content of the journal. In the instructions to the authors, four (80%) journals presented explicit reference to the ethical principles in the conduction of studies with animals. The induced animal models represented 100% of the articles analyzed in this study. The rat was the most employed animal in the analyzed articles (78.3%).

CONCLUSIONS

The present study can contribute, supplying subsidies for adoption of future editorials policies regarding the publication of animal research papers in Brazilian Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery.