WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., April 1 (UPI) -- A U.S.-led team of scientists says just as no two humans are the same, treating mice more as individuals in laboratory testing reduces erroneous results.
Purdue University researchers say their findings show the customary practice of standardizing mice by trying to limit environmental variation in laboratories actually increases the chance of getting an incorrect result.
The study, led by Assistant Professor Joseph Garner of Purdue and Professor Hanno Wurbel of the Justus-Liebig University of Giessen in Germany, suggests scientists should change their methods and test mice in deliberately varying environmental conditions. Garner said that will decrease the number of false positive test results and eliminate further costly testing of drugs or treatments destined to fail.
"In lab animals, we have this bizarre idea that we can control everything that happens," Garner said. "But we would never be able to do that with humans, and we wouldn't want to. You want to know if a drug is going to work in all people, so you test it on a wide range of different people. We should do the same thing with mice."
The research that included doctoral student Helene Richter is detailed in the early online edition of the journal Nature Methods.
