Abstract
Prevention of pain in rabbits is a priority for both welfare and validity of scientific data. We aimed to determine if the rabbit grimace scale (RbtGS) could be used as a viable, rapid assessment tool in two breeds of rabbit, Dutch belted (DB) and New Zealand white (NZW), following orchidectomy, as an adjunct to behavioral analysis. All animals received analgesia. Rabbits were filmed and their behavior was recorded at multiple time points pre- and post-orchidectomy. Observers then scored specific pain associated behaviors for analysis. Time matched footage was also scored using the rabbit grimace scale (RbtGS). Following surgery, rabbits showed significant increases in the duration spent displaying key pain associated behaviors at 1 and 5 h post-surgery. DB rabbits that received low dose meloxicam (0.2 mg/kg) showed significantly more pain behaviors at 1 and 5 h post-surgery compared to those administered a combination of higher dose meloxicam (0.6 mg/kg) and a lidocaine/bupivacaine local infusion. DB rabbits showed an increase in RbtGS score at both 1 and 5 h post-surgery. In the NZW rabbits, an increase in RbtGS score was only observed at 1 h post-surgery. Using behavioral analysis as the gold standard for comparison, the RbtGS was an effective means of determining when rabbits are painful following orchidectomy. Higher dose meloxicam (0.6 mg/kg) combined with local anesthetic was a more effective method of reducing pain, compared to lower dose meloxicam (0.2 mg/kg) alone.
Highlights
Rabbits are a popular pet and a common laboratory and farm species globally
For the frequency of active pain behaviors displayed during the morning observations, there was a significant main effect of treatment (X2 = 5.5015, p = 0.025), with rabbits administered meloxicam alone exhibiting significantly more pain behaviors compared to rabbits administered with multimodal analgesia
There was a significant main effect of time (X2 = 207.21, p < 0.001) where rabbits exhibited significantly more pain behaviors at 1 h postsurgery compared to all other morning time points
Summary
Rabbits are a popular pet and a common laboratory and farm species globally. In the UK, over 900,000 rabbits are kept as pets [1] and over 11,000 used in regulated scientific procedures per annum [2]. Despite the large numbers of rabbits undergoing such procedures, there is limited research on developing validated means of assessing pain in this species [6], little is known about the actual effectiveness of the analgesic drugs available for use in rabbits. There has been an increasing move in recent years toward multimodal analgesia (i.e., provision of lower doses of >1 analgesic from different drug classes) based on the assumption that this will provide more effective pain relief in rabbits, as it does in other species. Goldschlager et al [11] showed that buprenorphine (0.01 mg/kg) and meloxicam (0.1 mg/kg) in combination prevented a rise in fecal corticosterone metabolites (FCM) in New Zealand White rabbits These rabbits gained more weight in the 28 days following surgery than those that received only a single analgesic. Evaluating approaches such as this requires effective pain scoring systems
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