Abstract
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD: Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis) are becoming common around the world without a cure. Animal models of colitis have become instrumental in IBD research. The dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) induced murine colitis model is likely the most utilized due to its simplicity and reproducibility with over 4000 publications on PubMed, where weight loss is the most commonly used and reliable positive correlate. We predicted at current state of art, that the DSS colitis model can be optimized by using weight loss as a single cost‐saving outcome measure. Twenty recent and consecutive publications using the DSS model in PubMed were selected for review. Guarded cost estimations for additional outcome measures of colitis beyond weight loss were performed. In all manuscripts (100%), weight loss corroborated the conclusions. Average excess cost for examining additional measures of colitis was approximately $6700 per publication. Two studies (10.5%) were estimated to have spent over $20,000 in excess. Additional measures of colitis either supported the final conclusions found with weight loss, or lead to indeterminate results. Potential annual savings from following our guidance were calculated to be over $60,000 for and IBD lab. We conclude that weight loss is a sufficient, objective, and economical outcome measure of DSS‐induced colitis in mice.
Highlights
IntroductionInflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are chronic, relapsing‐remittinginflammatory disorders of the gastrointestinal tract
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are chronic, relapsing‐remittingAbbreviations: antigen presenting cell (APC), antigen‐presenting cell; CD, Crohn's disease; Disease activity index (DAI), disease activity index; DSS, dextran sulfate sodium; ELISA, enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay; IBD, Inflammatory bowel disease; MPO, myeloperoxidase; SCFA, short‐chain fatty acid; TUNEL, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling; UC, ulcerative colitis.inflammatory disorders of the gastrointestinal tract
We examined if weight loss may be a sufficient single outcome measure of DSS colitis in most IBD research
Summary
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are chronic, relapsing‐remittinginflammatory disorders of the gastrointestinal tract. | 494 sulfated polysaccharide with a highly variable molecular weight. The exact mechanism of DSS‐induced colitis is not clearly defined, but its major effect is disruption of the intestinal barrier integrity leading to intestinal inflammation.[7,8,9] The severity of the resulting colitis can be altered by many factors including, but not limited to the strain or gender of the animal or the molecular weight of DSS selected.[10,11] While of significant value in basic scientific studies, the DSS‐induced colitis model is acknowledged to be imperfect, and to mostly capture/model the intestinal injury and recovery associated with inflammatory responses of IBD.[9,12]
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