The Ethics Review Committee of UCFM granted ethics approval for the project (EC‐14‐028).īefore recruitment to the study, the body weight, and food and water consumption of all the rats were recorded.Īpproximately 1 ml of blood was drawn from the tail vein of each rat once a week, between 8.30 and 10.00 am. The bedding was changed and the cages were cleaned daily. During the study animals were housed for 6 days per week in standard rat cages based on sex (group housing, five animals per cage, 1344 cm 2 floor area per cage, with saw dust and wood peeling as the bedding material from a retail outlet for animal requirements, Colombo, Sri Lanka) and for 1 day per week they were kept in metabolic cages for data collection (water intake, food intake, urine output and body weight) under the necessary environmental conditions (temperature 23 ± 2☌, humidity 55%‐60%, 12/12 hours light‐dark cycles, ventilation set at 10‐15 changes per hour). All the animals were housed and treated in accordance with internationally accepted laboratory animal use and care guidelines and the guidelines for the ethics review of research proposals involving animals in Sri Lanka. Ltd, Sri Lanka) and tap water ad libitum. Thus, establishing a reference database for different parameters of the Sprague‐Dawley rats in the Animal House of UCFM will be of great importance for future researchers and the present study reports measurements of several selected hematological, biochemical and physiological parameters of Sprague‐Dawley rats at the Animal House of UCFM.Īpparently healthy 4‐ to 5‐month‐old male (n = 10) and female (n = 10) Sprague‐Dawley rats bred in the Animal House, UCFM, Sri Lanka were used for the study (We did not adopt any statistical method to calculate sample size in this research project and kept the sample size to a minimum as indicated in the ethical application submitted for approval.) The rats were fed with a pelleted diet (Vet House Pvt. 6, 7, 8, 9 In the past there have been instances in Sri Lanka when researchers faced problems of accepting the values of different measurements of rats in the control group and then comparing them with that of test groups of animals, due to the inconsistency of the values obtained. The factors that influence the reference data supplied by the animal breeder might now be different from those that were available for the first generation of rats obtained by the Animal House.ĭata published in international studies carried out in the Animal houses, when compared with breeders' information, indicates that there are similarities and at the same time certain variations in the outcome. In addition, the present generation of Sprague‐Dawley rats bred in the Animal House was produced through inbreeding initially and later through outbreeding for many generations and may have undergone significant genetic and physiological changes over the years. However, such a set of reference values is currently unavailable for the rats bred under local conditions in the Animal House of UCFM. Those values can be used in research when it is necessary to confirm whether values obtained for the control group are within the reference range. ![]() When rats are obtained from an animal breeder, the breeder publishes a set of reference values for the different parameters measured under a given set of conditions. They were introduced to the Animal House of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo in 1977 and the Animal House has been supplying Sprague‐Dawley rats for various research projects through continuous breeding for many generations. 4, 5 This strain of rats is widely used in Sri Lanka. ![]() Their research applications include toxicology, safety and efficacy testing, reproduction and development, behavior, nutrition and pharmacology studies. Out of the strains of rats available for research, Sprague‐Dawley rats, an outbred albino strain of rats that shows calmness and ease in handling, are widely accepted and a general‐purpose research model used in many studies. Numerous strains of rats, both inbred and outbred, are used in experimental research. Rats also share about 95% of the human DNA and hence are more or less susceptible to similar diseases to humans and respond to treatments in a similar manner. The reasons for their wide usage include their small size, ease of handling and housing, rapid reproduction, short life span and the ability to observe several generations in a short period of time. About 95% of all lab animals in medical research are rats and mice bred specifically for research purposes.
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