Nesting behavior is associated with body weight and grip strength loss in mice suffering from experimental arthritis.

ABSTRACT: Objective animal health evaluation is essential to determine welfare and discomfort in preclinical in vivo research. Body condition scores, body weight, and grimace scales are commonly used to evaluate well-being in murine rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis experiments. However, nest-building, a natural behavior in mice, has not yet been evaluated in wild type (WT) or genetically modified rodents suffering from collagen antibody-induced arthritis (CAIA). To address this, we analyzed nesting behavior in WT mice, calcitonin gene-related peptide alpha-deficient (αCGRP^-/-) mice, and calcitonin receptor-deficient (Calcr^-/-) mice suffering from experimental RA compared to healthy control (CTRL) groups of the same genotypes. CAIA was induced in 10-12-week-old male

SUBMITTER: Dietrich T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10754866 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature