Refinement and reduction through the control of variation
Refinement and reduction through the control of variation
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DOI：
10.1177/026119290403201s43
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发表时间：
2004-06-01
影响因子：
2.7
通讯作者：
Festing, MFW
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Festing, MFW
在不损失科学信息的情况下，用最少的动物数量有效地进行动物实验的关键在于很好地控制随机变异，并识别和控制动物的性别或品系等固定效应变异。然而，许多科学家错误地认为，使用远亲繁殖的、遗传上不同的动物是合理的，因为在某种程度上，它们更接近于模拟人类。不幸的是，所有这些都增加了表型变异，这导致了不那么有力的实验。如果目标是模拟人类反应的变异，可以通过使用来自几个相同基因菌株的少量动物来实现，而不需要增加动物的总数。减少个体间的差异，无论是由遗传还是非遗传原因造成的，几乎总是会带来改进的实验。固定效应变异，如动物的性别，可以通过将结论限制在实际使用的性别上，或者通过假设另一性别会以相同的方式做出反应，或者通过使用析因设计，通过在不增加动物总数的情况下将两种性别都包括在研究中，来考虑。
The key to doing animal experiments efficiently, while using the minimum number of animals without loss of scientific information, lies in good control of random variation, and recognition and control of "fixed effect" variation, such as the sex or strain of the animals. However, many scientists erroneously assume that the use of outbred, genetically heterogeneous animals is justified, because in some way, they more closely model humans. Unfortunately, all this does is to increase the phenotypic variation, which results in less-powerful experiments. If the aim is to model variation in human responses, this can be done by using a small number of animals from several isogenic strains, without increasing the total number of animals. Reducing inter-individual variation, whether caused by genetic or non-genetic causes, will nearly always result in improved experiments. Fixed-effect variation, such as the sex of the animals, can be taken into account, either by restricting the conclusions to the sex actually used, or by assuming that the other sex would respond in the same way, or by including both sexes in the study, by using a factorial design, without increasing the total number of animals.