Laboratory of Cellular Communication, Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Lab Anim. 2024 Apr;58(2):164-169. doi: 10.1177/00236772231194957. Epub 2023 Oct 28.
Poorly designed preclinical studies may compromise human health due to erroneous conclusions regarding treatment effects in addition to contributing to experimental irreproducibility and wasted resources. Randomization is one of the crucial steps to enhance scientific rigor and is a commonly recognized bias-reducing instrument that increases the reliability and reproduction of studies involving animals (even with syngeneic animals). This procedure should be considered when planning a study and reported during data publication. In this context, this work aimed to highlight the importance of adopting quality measures in preclinical trials, with an emphasis on animal randomization. The 'Mouse Randomization' app was developed to help researchers estimate an adequate sample size to obtain significant statistical power, ensuring the ethical use of animals. This app is freely available on the internet to carry out animal randomization and calculate sample sizes for experiments. We believe that this brief discussion about animal randomization could raise awareness among researchers on how to improve the quality of preclinical research, increasing reproducibility and avoiding animal misuse.
设计不佳的临床前研究可能会对人类健康造成危害，因为这些研究可能会导致关于治疗效果的错误结论，此外还可能导致实验不可重现和资源浪费。随机化是提高科学严谨性的关键步骤之一，是一种普遍认可的减少偏倚的工具，可以提高涉及动物的研究的可靠性和可重复性（即使使用同基因动物）。在计划研究时应考虑这一程序，并在数据发布时报告。在这种情况下，这项工作旨在强调在临床前试验中采用质量措施的重要性，重点是动物随机化。“Mouse Randomization”应用程序旨在帮助研究人员估计获得显著统计功效的适当样本量，以确保动物的伦理使用。该应用程序可在互联网上免费用于进行动物随机化和计算实验的样本量。我们相信，关于动物随机化的简短讨论可以提高研究人员的认识，了解如何提高临床前研究的质量，提高可重复性并避免滥用动物。
