Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
Name : The 49th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology
Date : June 30, 2022 - July 02, 2022
The well-being of laboratory animals and compliance with the 3Rs needs to be improved for conducting animal experiments.
The environmental enrichment (EE) has been a useful paradigm for improving refinement of the 3Rs. The use of EE for improving the well-being of laboratory animals is recommended in ILAR guide 8th edition (2011). As a result, the number of animal research facilities with EE programs in the United States has increased significantly in 2013 report compared with that of 2007 (IACUC Handbook 2007, 2013).
In recent years, many research results on EEs have been reported. Especially in rodents, cognitive function improvement, increased exploratory behaviors, suppression of anxiety behaviors, brain morphological changes, suppression of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity and decrease in glucocorticoid concentration have been reported (Sampedro-Piquero and Begega 2013, Goes et al. 2015, Kirkpatrick et al. 2014, Wolf et al. 2006, Fox 2006). On the other hand, it was also reported that EE increases in the aggression and anxiety of mice (Nevison et al. 1999).
As above, many studies have been conducted recently to investigate the influences of EEs on the psychology, behavior, and physiology of laboratory animals. And further research is required on the effects of the type and usage of EEs on various animal species. In this way, it has become known that EE is not always effective depending on animal species or experiments purposes.
Therefore, it is important to use EEs according to the experimental purpose, the animal species and characteristics, but the research of EEs evaluation has not been progress sufficiently.
In this presentation, we will introduce the effects of EEs on laboratory animals, including the results of our studies on social EE (paired housing) evaluation indices in monkeys.
