More than 37 million people in the United States have diabetes, which is the seventh leading cause of death in the country and is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, kidney damage, liver disease, and several types of cancer. New preclinical studies show promise...

With continuing advances in medical research, small animals such as rats, mice, and gerbils are being used as surgical models. Advanced monitoring devices have been developed to monitor subjects during surgery to improve surgical outcomes and consider increasing concern for humane practices. These devices monitor several vital signs, including blood...

Reproduction is life’s most basic function, and in some ways also its most mysterious. Researchers working with mice and rats have made several recent reproduction-related breakthroughs, including an in vivo cure for infertility in mice, creating rat sperm from stem cells, discovering that a previously disregarded type of estrogen actually...

Animal warming pads are widely used by pet owners for heat therapy and to improve the general wellbeing of cats, dogs, and small animals at home. These same benefits of using warming pads for animals apply to clinical settings too. Far infrared animal warming pads are particularly beneficial for rodent...

April is National Autism Awareness Month, and researchers worldwide are working to better understand this complex condition. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects one in 44 children in the U.S. and is about four times more common in boys than in girls. There are...

Surgical procedures are governed by strict rigorous controls, but the specifics of anesthetic induction are surprisingly nebulous. There are three overarching classes of agent used to induce animal anesthesia: volatile substances; injectables like ketamine; and local anesthetics.  Animal research labs make routine use of inhalant anesthetics, typically isoflurane, to sedate specimens...

Laboratory animal science is a staple of biomedical research, contributing to countless breakthroughs in drug discovery and novel therapeutics. It is also ever-changing. Researchers are constantly seeking ways to enhance key protocols with the aim of improving animal welfare and surgical outcomes. One of the main avenues of this initiative...

As the world begins to emerge from the pandemic and new coronavirus infections are on the decline, many people are still suffering the effects of long-haul COVID, a debilitating set of symptoms that has plagued patients and flummoxed the medical community. Symptoms of long COVID, which affects up to 30% of...

Routine handling of laboratory mice can improve animal welfare and make them easier to restrain for research procedures. Yet there is conflicting information about the best method of handling and restraint. The conventional technique for handling mice was to grasp them firmly by the base of the tail, but this...

While we now have multiple effective vaccines for COVID-19, another longstanding vaccine goal may be getting closer to becoming reality: a universal influenza vaccine. The Centers for Disease and Control estimates that the flu has caused an average of 28 million illnesses and 34,000 deaths in the United States...

Rodents have long been the preferred species of lab animals in biomedical research, with sporadic experiments on common brown rats stemming back 150 years. Though laboratory animal research continues to pose ethical questions, particularly with respect to animal welfare, the scientific achievements linked to lab rats are innumerous. This primarily...

Anesthesia vaporizers are used for administering volatile anesthetics. They must deliver a reliable and safe concentration of the agent to the receiver in a controllable manner. This article discusses the key elements that are important when selecting a vaporizer to use with rodent subjects. What do Anesthesia Vaporizers Do? Mouse and rat...

This past year was a big one for scientific research, with breakthroughs coming in everything from vaccines for chronic diseases to new approaches to extending lifespan. Here are 2021’s top scientific discoveries in studies with mice. January: A Vaccine for Multiple Sclerosis Using the same mRNA technology used to develop its COVID-19...

Working with rodents in biomedical research is a privilege granted to the scientific community on the expectation that studies will provide significant new insights into human health. Since the mid-19th Century, mice and rats have served as the preferred species for such research owing to their genetic and physiological similarities to...

Women have made important contributions in the neuroscience field since even before it emerged as a specific discipline in the mid-20th century. Despite being a part of the field since its inception, women are still underrepresented in neuroscience, which can be attributed to longstanding bias and misconceptions about the intellectual abilities of...

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and while the overall death rate from breast cancer has gone down 1% every year from 2013 to 2018, breast cancer is still the most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women and has the second-highest death rates, after lung cancer. In the United States,...

For more than 150 years, researchers have used laboratory mice to study various physical diseases and conditions that occur in humans, in part because changes in the body of a rodent are relatively easy to control and study. Using mice to study mental conditions has been more challenging, however, because the...

Obesity is one of the most serious health issues in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 72% of U.S. adults are overweight, more than 42% are obese, and more than 9% are severely obese. Not only does obesity increase the risk of heart...

Parkinson’s disease is a disorder of the brain and central nervous system that can cause tremors, stiffness, movement and balance issues, and cognitive impairment. Almost one million people in the U.S. are currently living with Parkinson's disease, about 50 percent more men than women. Parkinson's disease occurs when specific nerve cells...

Many of the conditions and functions studied by animal researchers are too specific or esoteric to be easily understood by the general public, but there’s one area of study everyone can relate to: pain. Occasional pain is an expected part of life, but when it becomes chronic—defined as pain that persists...