EARA News Digest 2024 - Week 30
Welcome to your Monday morning update, from EARA, on the latest news in biomedical science, policy and openness on animal research.
This week: EU animal use statistics for 2022; Mice studies and memory loss; Animal study insights into bird flu. |
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EU animal use statistics for 2022 published
The publication of comprehensive statistics for 2022, from across the European Union (EU), on the use of animals in scientific, medical and veterinary research have been published.
The headline figures in the European Commission report show that the total number of animals used in 2022 in the EU-27 was just under 7m (6,996,249).
The EU noted that there has been a decreasing trend in the use of animals in regulatory testing for medicines and other products (around half a million animals less than in 2018), and a 10% decrease in the use of rats and mice over the last five years.
According to the EU statistics, the top three EU countries for animal use in 2022 were France (1,829,827 animals), followed by Germany (1,342,404 animals) and Spain (1,047,233 animals). Read more about the EU figures.
In 2022, 90% of the total were mice, fish, rats and birds, whereas dogs, cats and monkeys account for around 0.23% of the total. Here are some of the biomedical breakthroughs achieved in 2022.
EARA executive director, Kirk Leech, said: “The EU statistics on animal use in 2022 are still large numbers, but they represent thousands of studies by researchers in Europe to develop vaccines and treatments for diseases, such as Covid-19 and continue the remarkable progress made to fight cancer and diabetes.”
Separate figures were also produced to record the number of animals that were bred but not used in experiments, this was 9,556,700 across the EU (very similar to when the figures were last published in 2017 - 9,544,227). Find out more here.
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Tackling memory loss with mice studies
Two separate studies, both performed in mice, are bringing insights into ways to combat memory loss in humans.
Memory loss, in conditions like Alzheimer's disease, is linked to activity in brain cells, namely through receptors for the hormone serotonin. It is also known that sleep deprivation affects memory, making it difficult to retrieve information in the brain.
Research from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, found that two medications (roflumilast and vardenafil) used for asthma and erectile dysfunction respectively, restored social and spatial memories in sleep-deprived mice.
The study (presented for the first time last month at the FENS Forum 2024), indicate promising directions for developing treatments for human memory loss, both in neurodegenerative diseases and sleep deprivation.
Richard Roche, at EARA member Maynooth University, Ireland and chair of the FENS Forum communication committee, who was not involved in the research, said: “This research shows that social and spatial memories seemingly lost through sleep-deprivation can be recovered.”
Meanwhile, US researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas, and the University of Cambridge, UK, think that molecules similar to serotonin, such as lorcaserin, could improve memory in Alzheimer’s patients.
Using genetically altered mice to mimic human mutations in a serotonin receptor gene, often found in individuals with memory loss, the researchers observed significant memory deficits in the mice with these mutations.
Moreover, mice presenting Alzheimer’s disease as well as these mutations had changes in serotonin function, something that could be considered in future treatments for this degenerative disease.
This research was published in Science Advances.
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Animal study insights into bird flu
Following an outbreak of bird flu in US dairy cattle, researchers have made progress to understand the potential of the disease to cause infection on a wider scale, and the chances of it spreading to humans.
The viral avian influenza strain, H5N1, has previously caused significant flu outbreaks in birds, and emerged again in April. It has since been identified in at least 140 dairy farms across the US (particularly in the cows’ milk), as well as in four dairy workers.
In a study led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, milk from infected cows was dripped into the noses of mice and ferrets, which led to severe disease in the animals.
The team saw that infection by the virus could occur by drinking milk and breathing it in through the air, and could also spread to non-respiratory tissues such as the eye and muscle. However, in ferrets, they found that airborne transmission, between infected and healthy animals, was low.
Nevertheless, they found that H5N1 could bind to molecules on host cells that recognise both avian and human influenza viruses, raising the possibility that H5N1 is adapting to human hosts and may be able to affect people.
The results have prompted calls for the need for greater monitoring and surveillance in affected, or exposed populations, of both animals and humans to track future risk.
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