Every year, millions of mice are enlisted for duty in medical research. It’s their sweet, beady-eyed little faces that can make the ramifications a tough pill to swallow.
But the contribution made to medical research by laboratory animals, the large majority of which continue to be rodents, is enormous. Their systems are similar enough to ours to help scientists determine the severity of a disease as well as to hang hope on a newly developed cure.
We’re learning via Reuters News that mice may soon have some surprising company in the world’s research laboratories, perhaps prompting them to all simultaneously turn on their little bitty porch lights to hasten their arrival.
The biochemical reaction of white blood cells in moths, as well as other insect varieties, to the introduction of pathogens or trial medicines, is similar enough to the response by the white blood cells in mice to render them a useful test subject for early stage studies.
It’s not hard to believe that cost control is a driving factor. Your average lab rodents can rack up room and board charges of about $100. Food and care costs for an insect or its larval equivalent are mere pennies.
Compared results from tests on moths and those on mice correlate well enough such that the former are being increasingly tapped for service. Insect testing at the outset permits researchers to better define the study scope for subsequent and more refined investigations for which the rodents are still useful. This sequential approach using the different life forms can result in the need for 80 percent fewer lab mice, according to Kevin Kavanagh, National University of Ireland biologist, in an interview with Reuters.
Photo courtesy of Entomolo, via Wikimedia Commons
