Only warm mice are models for humans

20-06-2012
A study claims that mice are not relevant analogues for humans - but only because they're too cold.
Only warm mice are relevant to medical research (?)*

[Warm mice are not like cold mice, but are like humans? See more on how easy it is for lab conditions to confuse results here: http://www.vivisectioninformation.com/index.php?p=1_27_Unreproducable-results-from-the-animal-lab- VIN]

Are Cold Mice Affecting Drug Testing?
Science Daily, March 30, 2012
(Story reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University Medical Center. The original article was written by Ruthann Richter.)


Nine out of 10 drugs successfully tested in mice and other animal models ultimately fail to work in people, and one reason may be traced back to a common fact of life for laboratory mice: they're cold, according to a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Laboratory mice, who account for the vast majority of animal research subjects, are routinely housed in chilly conditions, which may affect their well-being as well as the outcome of research studies, said Joseph Garner, PhD, associate professor of comparative medicine.


"If you want to design a drug that will help a patient in the hospital, you cannot reasonably do that in animals that are cold-stressed and are compensating with an elevated metabolic rate," Garner said. "This will change all aspects of their physiology -- such as how fast the liver breaks down a drug --which can't help but increase the chance that a drug will behave differently in mice and in humans."

more at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120330205921.htm