Co-Housed Large Animal Telemetry: Promoting Animal Welfare While Maintaining Study Sensitivity

At Charles River, we are committed to ensuring all our animals have the highest level of care and welfare. It has been published that social housing is the best form of enrichment we can provide our animals, and to this end, our social housing program includes placing all animals in pairs or groups.

However, social housing challenges emerge in large animal telemetry studies, which routinely use animals that are individually housed during telemetry recording sessions. Hardware logistics often drive this, but preconceptions also exist concerning the behavioral impact of co-housing on data quality. Because most facilities co-house their animals except when telemetry data is being collected, separation during recording periods may introduce additional unwanted stress and subsequently impact the sensitivity of the data to detect pharmacological changes in the context of physiological stressors.

DSI (Data Sciences International, St. Paul, MN, USA)PhysioTel® Digital telemetry system allows large animals to be co-housed during telemetry recordings without signal cross-talk. To demonstrate this capacity, animals weresurgically prepared with telemetry implants for measurement of arterial blood pressure, heart rate, left ventricular parameters, lead II electrocardiogram (ECG) and body temperature. Telemetry data was collected using two designs: a standard Williams’ Latin-square design with an undosed companion animal in each pen and a partial Latin-square design where the two animals in the same pen received the same dose (reducing the potential for cross-contamination). Animals were housed in pairs (pens at least 4.5m2) and remained pair-housed for the entire recording period.

Baseline cardiovascular parameters were comparable with historical data collected from single-housed animals. Both study designs demonstrated a similar sensitivity to detect cardiovascular effects with positive control agents such as moxifloxacin and atenolol.

Co-housing provides companionship, which is important for animal welfare especially if telemetry recordings last more than 24 hours. Charles River now proudly offers the capacity to conduct large animal telemetry studies in socialized animals to improve both study animal welfare and scientific quality.