1 Department of Comparative Medicine, Stanford University, United States.
2 Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, United States.
Lab Anim. 2019 Aug;53(4):342-351. doi: 10.1177/0023677218797974. Epub 2018 Oct 4.
Routine health assessment of laboratory rodents can be improved using automated home cage monitoring. Continuous, non-stressful, objective assessment of rodents unaware that they are being watched, including during their active dark period, reveals behavioural and physiological changes otherwise invisible to human caretakers. We developed an automated feeder that tracks feed intake, body weight, and physical appearance of individual radio frequency identification-tagged mice in social home cages. Here, we experimentally induce illness via lipopolysaccharide challenge and show that this automated tracking apparatus reveals sickness behaviour (reduced food intake) as early as 2-4 hours after lipopolysaccharide injection, whereas human observers conducting routine health checks fail to detect a significant difference between sick mice and saline-injected controls. Continuous automated monitoring additionally reveals pronounced circadian rhythms in both feed intake and body weight. Automated home cage monitoring is a non-invasive, reliable mode of health surveillance allowing caretakers to more efficiently detect and respond to early signs of illness in laboratory rodent populations.
使用自动化的家庭笼监测可以改进实验室啮齿动物的常规健康评估。对未意识到自己被观察的啮齿动物进行连续、无压力、客观的评估，包括在它们活跃的黑暗期，揭示了行为和生理变化，否则人类饲养员是看不见的。我们开发了一种自动化喂食器，可以跟踪射频识别标记的个体小鼠在社交家庭笼中的进食量、体重和身体外观。在这里，我们通过脂多糖（LPS）挑战实验诱导疾病，并表明这种自动化跟踪装置在 LPS 注射后 2-4 小时就能揭示出疾病行为（摄食量减少），而进行常规健康检查的人类观察者则无法检测到患病小鼠与生理盐水注射对照之间的显著差异。连续的自动化监测还显示出摄食和体重都有明显的昼夜节律。自动化家庭笼监测是一种非侵入性、可靠的健康监测方式，使饲养员能够更有效地发现和应对实验室啮齿动物种群中早期疾病的迹象。
