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Nearly half of all external grants from the US National Institutes of Health require approval by the recipient organization's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) before the funds can be used for research with animals. Given that large sums of money are spent annually on research involving animals, studies evaluating the strengths, weaknesses and overall effectiveness of IACUCs and similar animal welfare committees are needed. The authors designed and carried out a self-assessment survey on IACUC function and effectiveness. They found that 98% of all respondents believed that their IACUCs advanced animal welfare, but in many instances, veterinarians' responses to individual survey items were significantly different from those of other IACUC members. Protocol compliance, protocol review training and better understanding among non-committee members of the need for regulatory oversight are some areas where improvements could be made. Less than 50% of respondents stated that literature searches to find alternatives to animal use or painful or distressful procedures were helpful.

The type and location of fire alarms are important considerations in animal facility design. The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals recommends minimizing animal exposure to such alarms. Nevertheless, it is often necessary to maintain fire alarms within animal housing or procedural areas. The authors exposed male mice to the flashing strobe light component of a standard fire alarm and evaluated mouse fecal corticosterone concentration, which is known to be an indicator of stress. Mice were exposed to the strobe light for 5 min during either the light or the dark phase of the light:dark cycle. The authors collected fecal samples every 6 h for 24 h before exposing mice to the alarm and every 6 h for 24 h after exposure. Fecal samples taken before exposure (baseline samples) showed a normal circadian pattern of corticosterone metabolite excretion. In fecal samples taken after mice were exposed to the fire alarm, metabolite concentrations did not significantly differ from baseline concentrations over time.

The value of a static mouse cage is partially determined by the cage's ability to dissipate carbon dioxide and ammonia. The authors compared the concentrations of ammonia and carbon dioxide produced by mice housed in two types of static isolator cages: a newly introduced disposable cage and a conventional reusable cage. Female mice were housed in three disposable and three reusable cages (n = 5 per cage). After 7 d, groups that were housed in disposable cages were rehoused in fresh reusable cages and vice versa. Intracage carbon dioxide, ammonia, temperature and relative humidity were measured daily. Overall, there were no significant differences in carbon dioxide or ammonia concentrations between the cage types. Within 30 min of placing mice in cages, carbon dioxide concentrations rose to more than 10,000 ppm in both cage types and rarely dropped below 8,000 ppm during both phases of the study. Ammonia concentrations rose slowly until day 4 and then began to rise rapidly. The maximum average ammonia concentration was 710 ppm. There was a highly significant relationship between increasing levels of humidity and ammonia production in the disposable cages (r = 0.88). For the reusable cages, the correlation was not as strong (r = 0.68). Both cage types were similar in their ability to dissipate carbon dioxide and ammonia. The suggested frequency of cage changing can only be estimated; on the basis of existing literature, it seems prudent to change cages when the ammonia concentration reaches 50 ppm.

The nonhuman primate (NHP) facility at Great Eastern University had an IACUCapprove d protocol to supply blood and cer t ain other tissues (e.g ., lymph no de biopsies) from live primates to researchers for their studies. Joan Collier, an IACUC member who also was an IACUC office staff employee, was carrying out a third-year renewal review of the NHP facility’s protocol. As part of her office duties, Collier helped to assure that animal use procedures listed on research grants were approved by the IACUC on one or more of the principal investigator’s protocols. Therefore, it surprised her to find that the use of the NHP facility tissue collection protocol by investigators at Great Eastern seemed to exceed the number of research grants that claimed to require the use of primate tissues. C ollier did a little detective work, focusing on grants belonging to Drs. White and Green. White’s grant, which used monkeys in a surgical study, included blood transfusions using blood obtained from other monkeys of her ow n. Howe ver, she had recently begun using the NHP facility protocol to supply additional blood for transfusions. Sh e did no t rep or t t h i s t o t he IACUC, nor w as it me nt i on e d on he r l a st n on ­ competing renewal to her funding institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In c ont ra st , Gre e n’s re s e arc h n or m a l ly us e d on ly commercially avail able mice and mous e cel l lines. But in t he second year of his study, he realized that he needed to conf ir m s ome of his results by using pr imar y cells derived f rom NHP lymph nodes. Therefore, he amended his IACUC proto c o l t o a d d t h e us e of t h e p r im ate lymph node cells obtained from animals at the school’s NHP facility, but he never informed his funding source (the NIH) of this change. When questioned by Collier about the use of the NHP facility animals, both White and Green indicated that they had nothing to do with the live monkeys; they simply obtained blood or lymph node t issue using the NHP f aci lity’s fee-for­ ser vice program. They never notified the NIH because they believed they were not using live monkeys. C ol li e r s ai d t h at t h e m on ke y t i s s u e s obtained from the NHP facility were custom samples and could not be considered ‘off-the­ shelf ’ items. In her opinion, the researchers were non-compliant with their NIH grants. Do you think that White and Green were noncompliant with their grants? Should Green’s addition of the lymph node tissue have been reviewed for its scientific merit? What role, if any, should the IACUC, NHP facility and Great Eastern University have in addressing the concerns of Collier?