A Study to Assess the Quality of Reporting of Animal Research Studies Published in PubMed Indexed Journals: A Retrospective, Cross-Sectional Content Analysis.

Kruttika R Chitnis,Sharmila V Jalgaonkar,Ayesha C Shah

doi:10.7759/cureus.21439

Abstract

Objectives: A complete and concise pre-clinical experimental research gives detailed information about the disease-specific model, prevents duplication, and saves animal life, money, as well as time. It will also allow readers to effectively interpret and evaluate the work and ensure that others can replicate the experiments described. The present study was conducted to assess the adequacy of animal details provided in published experimental animal studies.Methods: All in vivo studies published as full-text articles in two PubMed indexed journals (one Indian and one international) from January 2011 to December 2019 and satisfying the inclusion norms were included. A checklist consisting of 27 discrete items subdivided under three domains, viz. animal details, disease model, and guidelines, was used. Every article was assessed by two investigators independently for determining the reporting quality.Results: One hundred and seventy-seven studies satisfied the inclusion criteria. Age or age range was reported in 20.34% of the articles in the Indian journal and 5.88% articles in the international journal (p=0.019). Housing and husbandry details were reported in all the articles published in the international journal and 82.7% of the articles in the Indian journal (p=0.001). The disease/pathology studied was given in 70.62% of articles published in the Indian journal and 86.27% of articles published in the international journal (p=0.029). None of the studies provided details of genetic modification, health status, sample size calculation, steps taken to minimize bias, and implementation of randomization.Conclusion: There is a need for optimal reporting of certain relevant animal details, disease models, experimental procedures, sample size calculation, and adherence to guidelines by the researchers for which the reporting was found to be sub-par to improve reproducibility and validity of animal research.

Highlights

Research in science and biomedicine relies highly on preliminary animal experimental studies and investigations
646 articles from the Indian journal and 97 articles published in the international journal during 2011-2019 were initially screened for suitability
Exploratory content analysis of the in vivo animal research published in the two journals in the present study revealed that only a few articles mentioned the age range (~20% from the Indian journal and ~6% from the international journal)

Summary

Introduction

Research in science and biomedicine relies highly on preliminary animal experimental studies and investigations. The poor design of studies may expose humans to unnecessary harm [3,4] Another factor that could be contributing to the inability of animal testing findings to be replicated in humans is that analyses and summaries of animal research evidence are methodologically insufficient, leading to misinterpretation of results and often non-reproducibility. When these studies are published, many critical elements regarding details about animals, conditions under which experiments are performed, and the procedures undertaken are often missing [5]. The lack of reproducibility of preclinical studies has been identified as a hindrance to the translation of basic research into effective clinical therapies [6]

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