Abstract
Animal models are essential research tools in modern biomedical research, but there are concerns about their lack of reproducibility and the failure of animal data to translate into advances in human medical therapy. A major factor in improving experimental reproducibility is thorough communication of research methodologies. The recently published ARRIVE guidelines outline basic information that should be provided when reporting animal studies. This paper builds on ARRIVE by providing the minimum information needed in reports to allow proper assessment of pathology data gathered from animal tissues. This guidance covers aspects of experimental design, technical procedures, data gathering, analysis, and presentation that are potential sources of variation when creating morphological, immunohistochemical (IHC) or in situ hybridization (ISH) datasets. This reporting framework will maximize the likelihood that pathology data derived from animal experiments can be reproduced by ensuring that sufficient information is available to allow for replication of the methods and facilitate inter-study comparison by identifying potential interpretative confounders.
Highlights
Animal models are integral to understanding the pathogenesis and therapy of human disease [1,2,3]
The aim of this paper is to recommend the minimum information for publication of experimental pathology data (MINPEPA) that should be included when presenting pathology datasets from experimental animal studies
The guidance has been developed as a collaboration between expert pathologists, pathology journal editors and statisticians following consultation with the NC3Rs who sponsored development of the ARRIVE guidelines in the UK andshould provide other researchers with the ability to reproduce and validate novel findings
Summary
Animal models are integral to understanding the pathogenesis and therapy of human disease [1,2,3]. A lack of transparency in reporting, presenting as either incomplete disclosure of methods (sometimes due to journal word count restrictions) and/or a reluctance to report negative results often exacerbate these avoidable factors. The aim of this paper is to recommend the minimum information for publication of experimental pathology data (MINPEPA) (in addition to that suggested by the ARRIVE guidelines) that should be included when presenting pathology datasets from experimental animal studies. The guidance has been developed as a collaboration between expert pathologists, pathology journal editors and statisticians following consultation with the NC3Rs who sponsored development of the ARRIVE guidelines in the UK andshould provide other researchers with the ability to reproduce and validate novel findings.
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