Miller Amy L, Roughan Johnny V
School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK.
Institute of Bioscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HH, UK.
Animals (Basel). 2021 Dec 23;12(1):23. doi: 10.3390/ani12010023.
Cancer-bearing mice are at risk of developing anxiety, pain, or malaise. These conditions may not only harm welfare but could also undermine data quality and translational validity in studies to develop therapeutic interventions. We aimed to establish whether, or at what point mice developing lung cancer show these symptoms, what measures can best detect their onset, and if data quality and animal welfare can be enhanced by using non-aversive handling (NAH). Welfare was monitored using various daily methods. At the beginning and end of the study, we also scored behaviour for general welfare evaluation, recorded nociceptive thresholds, and applied the mouse grimace scale (MGS). Cancer caused a decline in daily welfare parameters (body weight, and food and water consumption) beginning at around 4 days prior to euthanasia. As cancer progressed, rearing and walking declined to a greater extent in cancer-bearing versus control mice, while grooming, inactive periods, and MGS scores increased. A decline in nest building capability and food consumption provided a particularly effective means of detecting deteriorating welfare. These changes suggested a welfare problem arose as cancer developed, so similar studies would benefit from refinement, with mice being removed from the study at least 4 days earlier. However, the problem of highly varied tumour growth made it difficult to determine this time-point accurately. There were no detectable beneficial effects of NAH on either data quality or in terms of enhanced welfare.
患癌小鼠有出现焦虑、疼痛或不适的风险。这些状况不仅可能损害其健康，还可能破坏开发治疗干预措施研究中的数据质量和转化效度。我们旨在确定患肺癌的小鼠是否会出现这些症状，或在何时出现这些症状，哪些措施能最好地检测到症状的出现，以及使用无厌恶处理（NAH）是否能提高数据质量和动物福利。通过各种日常方法监测健康状况。在研究开始和结束时，我们还对行为进行评分以进行总体健康评估，记录伤害性感受阈值，并应用小鼠 grimace 量表（MGS）。癌症导致在安乐死大约前 4 天开始，每日健康参数（体重、食物和水消耗量）下降。随着癌症进展，与对照小鼠相比，患癌小鼠的竖毛和行走下降幅度更大，而梳理毛发、静止期和 MGS 评分增加。筑巢能力和食物消耗量的下降提供了一种特别有效的检测健康状况恶化的方法。这些变化表明随着癌症发展出现了健康问题，因此类似的研究将受益于改进措施，即至少提前 4 天将小鼠从研究中移除。然而，肿瘤生长高度变化的问题使得准确确定这个时间点变得困难。NAH 对数据质量或改善健康状况均未产生可检测到的有益影响。
