Health screening of mice

Frequently, approximately every 3 months, serum is sent for testing. Sentinel mouse is the mouse which indicates the worst condition a unit can face. Each room has its own sentinels which are placed on the last shelf of a rack. In order to expose the sentinels to all the antigens in the room a period of 2-3 months is needed. We use BALB-C and C57/BL6 for sentinels since BALB-C is the most susceptible strain to all agents, with exception of parasites (mites) to which the strain C57/Bl6 is sensitive.

Sentinels cleaning procedure is as follows:

• One dirty cage is emptied from its animals and completed with some dirty bedding taken from the 5/6 other dirty cages from the same row / same column of the rack;
• The sentinels are transferred into this dirty cage where they stay for a week (also keep the "dirty" water bottle + the food + the dirty filter top if FTC/IVC are used).
• When some animals from the colony to be tested are to be euthanized, they are placed in contact with the sentinels in the sentinel cage for one week before their euthanasia (never place the animals that have been in contact with sentinels back into the colony).
• Furthermore old breeders are used as sentinels too (breeding room).

Health status of the unit

Screening tests were performed by Charles River Laboratories LtD, according to the annual screens based on FELASA recommended screening, using their own tests. For health monitoring, the ensuing regular tests are performed on sentinel animals once a year.

The results of the following tests were found to be satisfactory