Cited by 191Animal testing and alternativesVeterinary Pharmacology and AnesthesiaAnimal Behavior and Welfare Studies

Pain and laboratory animals: publication practices for better data reproducibility and better animal welfare

Open access
Carbone, Larry, Austin, Jamie·2016·PLOS ONE

Abstract

Scientists who perform major survival surgery on laboratory animals face a dual welfare and methodological challenge: how to choose surgical anesthetics and post-operative analgesics that will best control animal suffering, knowing that both pain and the drugs that manage pain can all affect research outcomes. Scientists who publish full descriptions of animal procedures allow critical and systematic reviews of data, demonstrate their adherence to animal welfare norms, and guide other scientists on how to conduct their own studies in the field. We investigated what information on animal pain management a reasonably diligent scientist might find in planning for a successful experiment. To explore how scientists in a range of fields describe their management of this ethical and methodological concern, we scored 400 scientific articles that included major animal survival surgeries as part of their experimental methods, for the completeness of information on anesthesia and analgesia. The 400 articles (250 accepted for publication pre-2011, and 150 in 2014-15, along with 174 articles they reference) included thoracotomies, craniotomies, gonadectomies, organ transplants, peripheral nerve injuries, spinal laminectomies and orthopedic procedures in dogs, primates, swine, mice, rats and other rodents. We scored articles for Publication Completeness (PC), which was any mention of use of anesthetics or analgesics; Analgesia Use (AU) which was any use of post-surgical analgesics, and Analgesia Completeness (a composite score comprising intra-operative analgesia, extended post-surgical analgesia, and use of multimodal analgesia). 338 of 400 articles were PC. 98 of these 338 were AU, with some mention of analgesia, while 240 of 338 mentioned anesthesia only but not post-surgical analgesia. Journals' caliber, as measured by their 2013 Impact Factor, had no effect on PC or AU. We found no effect of whether a journal instructs authors to consult the ARRIVE publishing guidelines published in 2010 on PC or AC for the 150 mouse and rat articles in our 2014-15 dataset. None of the 302 articles that were silent about analgesic use included an explicit statement that analgesics were withheld, or a discussion of how pain management or untreated pain might affect results. We conclude that current scientific literature cannot be trusted to present full detail on use of animal anesthetics and analgesics. We report that publication guidelines focus more on other potential sources of bias in experimental results, under-appreciate the potential for pain and pain drugs to skew data, and thus mostly treat pain management as solely an animal welfare concern, in the jurisdiction of animal care and use committees. At the same time, animal welfare regulations do not include guidance on publishing animal data, even though publication is an integral part of the cycle of research and can affect the welfare of animals in studies building on published work, leaving it to journals and authors to voluntarily decide what details of animal use to publish. We suggest that journals, scientists and animal welfare regulators should revise current guidelines and regulations, on treatment of pain and on transparent reporting of treatment of pain, to improve this dual welfare and data-quality deficiency.

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  • Underreporting of welfare management procedures contributes to the perpetuation of noncompliant methodologies and insufficient or inappropriate use of analgesia or other welfare measures.

    “Underreporting of welfare management procedures contributes to the perpetuation of noncompliant methodologies and insufficient or inappropriate use of analgesia [213] or other welfare measures.”

    From Reporting animal research: Explanation and elaboration for the ARRIVE guidelines 2.0 (2020) · cites this paper as [213]

    The Conclusion says that under-reporting pain management encourages under-treatment and can lead researchers to repeat apparent analgesic non-use. The Introduction likewise describes how that impression can perpetuate non-use. The paper does not establish that the resulting methods are noncompliant or extend this finding to other welfare measures. (LLM, conf=0.85)

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  • Untreated pain can affect the animals' biology and add variability to the experiment.

    “Untreated pain can affect the animals’ biology and add variability to the experiment; however, specific pain management procedures can also introduce variability, affecting experimental data [212,213].”
  • Specific pain management procedures can introduce variability, affecting experimental data.

    “Untreated pain can affect the animals’ biology and add variability to the experiment; however, specific pain management procedures can also introduce variability, affecting experimental data [212,213].”

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Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [42]Nature Publishing Group. Reporting Checklist For Life Sciences Articles 2015 [cited 2015 July 21]. Checklist for authors submitting article to Nature's family of journals]. Available from: http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/checklist.pdf.

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Authors
Carbone, L., & Austin, J.
Affiliations
University of California, San Francisco (US)
Corresponding author
  • Carbone, Larry
  • Austin, Jamie
Venue
PLOS ONE
Published
2016-05-12
Volume
11
Issue
5
Pages
e0155001
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2388286703
Cited by
191
References
91
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 3
FWCI
27.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • WBI Studies Repository (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
National Science Fundation (1455838)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Veterinary › Small Animals › Animal testing and alternatives
  • Health Sciences › Veterinary › Small Animals › Veterinary Pharmacology and Anesthesia
  • Health Sciences › Veterinary › Small Animals › Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies
Keywords
animal pain management, anesthesia, postoperative analgesia, ARRIVE guidelines, animal welfare, data reproducibility, multimodal analgesia, journal impact factor, reporting quality, rats and mice, thoracotomy, craniotomy, organ transplantation, peripheral nerve injury
MeSH terms
Analgesics, Anesthesia, Animals, Animal Welfare, Animals, Laboratory, Models, Theoretical, Pain, Publications, Reproducibility of Results, Guidelines as Topic, Journal Impact Factor

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