Evidence-based comparative severity assessment in young and adult mice

In animal-based research, welfare assessments are essential for ethical and legal reasons. Accurate assessment of suffering in laboratory animals is often complicated by the multidimensional character of distress and pain and the associated affective states. The present study aimed to design and validate multidimensional composite measure schemes comprising behavioral and biochemical parameters based on a bioinformatics approach. Published data sets from induced and genetic mouse models of neurological and psychiatric disorders were subjected to a bioinformatics workflow for cross-model analyses. An online tool (R package) is provided, allowing the application of the bioinformatics approach to severity assessment data sets regardless of the parameters or models used. This tool is available at: https://github.com/mytalbot/cms.The tool can also be used to validate refinement measures. <br> Raw data sets: Data-set_Fig2a corresponding to Figure 2a Data-set_Fig2b corresponding to Figure 2b Data-set_Fig2c corresponding to Figure 2c Data-set_Fig2d corresponding to Figure 2d Data-set_Fig2e corresponding to Figure 2e Data-set_Fig2f corresponding to Figure 2f Data-set_Fig2g corresponding to Figure 2g Data-set_Fig3a corresponding to Figure 3a Data-set_Fig3b corresponding to Figure 3b Data-set_Fig3c corresponding to Figure 3c Data-set_Fig3d corresponding to Figure 3d Data-set_Fig4a corresponding to Figure 4a Data-set_Fig4b corresponding to Figure 4b Data-set_Fig4c corresponding to Figure 4c Data-set_FigS1 corresponding to Supplementary Figure S1 Data-set_FigS2 corresponding to Supplementary Figure S2 Data-set_FigS3 corresponding to Supplementary Figure S3 Data-set_FigS4 corresponding to Supplementary Figure S4 Data-set_FigS5 corresponding to Supplementary Figure S5 Data-set_FigS6 corresponding to Supplementary Figure S6 Data-set_FigS7 corresponding to Supplementary Figure S7 Data-set_FigS8 corresponding to Supplementary Figure S8 Data-set_FigS9 corresponding to Supplementary Figure S9