Cost Comparison of Rodent Soiled Bedding Sentinel and Exhaust Air Dust Health-Monitoring Programs

Abstract

Rodent vivaria have traditionally used soiled bedding sentinel (SBS) health-monitoring programs to detect and exclude adventitious pathogens that could affect research results. Given the limitations of SBS, a likely reduction in animal usage, and a decrease in animal care staff labor, exhaust air dust (EAD) health monitoring has been evaluated by several groups for its efficacy in detecting pathogens when used as a complete replacement for traditional SBS health-monitoring programs. Compared with SBS, EAD has also been shown to provide increased sensitivity for the detection of multiple pathogens. After implementing EAD at our institution, we conducted an analysis to compare the annual costs of the 2 health-monitoringprograms. The EAD program was found to be 26% less expensive than SBS. In addition to these cost savings, EAD decreased the amount of time spent by the staff on heath-monitoring activities. For veterinary technicians, this decrease in time was calculated as a savings of 150 h annually, almost 3 h each week. Finally, the EAD program replaced the use of live sentinel animals, decreasing the associated yearly usage from 1,676 animals to zero.

Microbiota and environmental health monitoring of mouse colonies by metagenomic shotgun sequencing

“…Recently, however, a different environmental approach has been demonstrated sensitive for the detection of MPV (O’Connell et al, 2021 ). Many publications describe that environmental EAD analysis is qualitatively superior and economically convenient compared to classical sentinel system (Miller and Brielmeier, 2018 ) (Luchins et al, 2020a ) (Mahabir et al, 2019 ) (Mailhiot et al, 2020 ) (Manuel et al, 2016 ) (Manuel et al, 2017 ) (Miller and Brielmeier, 2018 ; Miller et al, 2016 ) (Pettan-Brewer et al, 2020 ) (Zorn et al, 2017 ). To extend the general significance of the results, our future work will analyze filters from different facilities and with different exposure times in order to verify the variability of the system.…”

“…This rodent-free approach is ethical reducing animals and animal manipulations. Finally, environmental health-monitoring programs were found to be qualitatively superior (Mailhiot et al, 2020 ) (Kimie Niimi, 2018 ) and less expensive than sentinel based programs, decreasing also the time spent by the staff on heath-monitoring activities (Luchins et al, 2020a ).…”

PCR Testing of Media Placed in Soiled Bedding as a Method for Mouse Colony Health Surveillance

“…Although the need for soiled bedding transfer remains, the methods described offer several advantages over our traditional surveillance program, all of them a function of eliminating sentinel mice from the program: reduced veterinary technician time in managing clinical cases, reduced husbandry labor, and the elimination of the emotional fatigue experienced at the time of sentinel euthanasia. 22 Table 1. Testing results of samples collected in the IVC cage system at the end of the 90-d study period.…”

“…16,17,23,25,[27][28][29][30][31][32]35,42 The collection and assay of only environmental samples eliminates the need for sentinel animals, leading to a desirable overall reduction in the number of animals used, and the associated reduction in husbandry, labor, and supplies. 22 Although environmental sampling can be done in many ways, the exhaust plenums of individually ventilated caging (IVC) systems have been shown to be a useful sampling location. 4,14,25,35 The so-called 'plenum testing' method has therefore been adopted by some animal care programs as a colony health surveillance technique.…”

Health Monitoring of Laboratory Rodent Colonies—Talking about (R)evolution

“…Budget may also play a role, as molecular detection methods can get quite cost intensive, especially when sample analysis is performed by commercial laboratories. However, there are reports that PCR-based testing of EAD material is actually less expensive as the traditional sentinel approach, mostly due to lower costs for animal husbandry [ 172 ]. Altogether, the use of environmental sample PCR testing material is beneficial in modern HM concepts and should be used as a valuable tool, supplementing basic diagnostic methods, particularly in terms of animal welfare.…”