The scientific literature of laboratory animal research is replete with papers reporting poor reproducibility of results as well as failure to translate results to clinical trials in humans. This may stem in part from poor experimental design and conduct of animal experiments. Despite widespread recognition of these problems and implementation of guidelines to attenuate them, a review of the li...

I shall deal briefly this morning with three topics: (1) the different species and strains of animals to be employed in experimental studies-of bowel cancer with asbestos; (2) combinations of carcinogens; and (3) the difficult and debatable tumors that one sees in experimental animals. I am glad to see that in South Africa baboons are also being used. Frequently Wistar rats are used .or rats of...

20 Isoflurane is a representative inhalant anesthesia used in laboratory animals. 21 However, isoflurane mediates respiratory depression and adverse clinical reactions 22 during induction. In the present study, we established a novel balanced anesthesia 23 method in mice that combined isoflurane anesthesia with midazolam and butorphanol 24 (MB). 25 Thirty-four male C57BL/6J mice received either...

Previous animal experiments with asbestos dusts have been almost entirely confined to chrysotile asbestos. It was, therefore, decided to investigate the effects of mill dusts from the three types of asbestos that are produced commercially in South Africa, namely chrysotile, amosite, and crocidolite. Chrysotile and amosite samples were relatively pure while in contrast the crocidolite dust was f...

Sepsis develops as a common inflammatory response to various infections. It runs with the picture of a complex heterogeneous syndrome which often leads to the development of multiple organ dysfunctions and causes the death of millions of people worldwide. For various reasons, detailed research of sepsis in humans is difficult to conduct; therefore, a lot of efforts have been made to model it. P...