The Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is an academic center affiliated with the Division of Toxicological Sciences in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

 

Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

Research Grants 2004-2005

Use of Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Pain Assessment for Laboratory Rats

Daniel M. Weary
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Laboratory rats are routinely subjected to surgical procedures, and it is important that they are provided with appropriate pain relief. However, in order to mitigate post-surgical pain in rats, we must first develop reliable methods of pain assessment. Promising pain assessment methods are currently under development for use with abdominal surgeries, but it may not be possible to generalize these methods to other types of surgeries.

Rats are known to emit high-frequency vocalizations in response to painful stimuli, and these vocalizations, can be reduced with the provision of analgesics. We will therefore investigate whether detailed vocalization analysis can be used as a general tool to assess post-surgical pain in rats. In our first experiment we will examine how rats' vocalizations change following a routine surgical procedure. In our second experiment we will provide animals with two dosages of analgesics to determine whether changes in vocalizations can be attributed specifically to pain. These studies will thus establish if rat ultrasonic vocalizations can be used as a reliable method of pain assessment in support of developing appropriate pain management regimes.