Numbers of Publications Related to Laboratory Animals

Abstract

Laboratory animals are widely utilized in biomedical research, so a search of scientific publications can  give us useful information on the use of animals. We retrieved the PubMed biomedicine database and  searched for publications related to laboratory animals from 1966 to 2005. We found that rats and mice  constitute the vast majority of species used in biomedical research; C57BL and BABL/c inbred mice, and  Sprague Dawley and Wistar outbred rats are the most common strains. Recently, the numbers of publications  relating to traditionally used animals such as rats, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, and sheep decreased slightly,  whereas the numbers relating to mice, fish, Drosophila and Caenorhabditis elegans increased from 1995  to 2005, with annual mean growth rates of 4.5%, 8.22%, 1.95%, and 10.3%, respectively. Publications  involving transgenic mice increased dramatically from the mid-1980s. This survey provides significant  clues for predicting the future direction of biomedical research.