LAUSR

The European Directive dedicated to the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, 2010/63/EU clearly indicates that animals, except those which are naturally solitary, should be socially housed in stable groups of compatible individuals. It is also well known that the recording of high quality cardiovascular data depends on housing conditions that do not lead to abnormal behavior, such as anxiety or stress-related behavior (1, 2). In a social species such as the nonhuman primate, group housing practices are known to reduce the frequency of abnormal behavior and to improve the psychological and typical behaviors indicative of well-being, such as allogrooming, which ensure harmony and cohesion in the group. In the current investigation, we compared single, paired and group housing conditions in four well-acclimated naïve male telemeter-implanted cynomolgus monkeys. Body temperature and cardiovascular parameters were continuously recorded by telemetry over a period of 19 hours. The animals were housed in ETS-123 compliant cages and data were recorded first under group housing and then under single and paired housing conditions, using a cross-over design. The present preliminary findings suggest a benefit of group housing conditions over single or paired housing in cynomolgus monkeys. Under our experimental conditions, paired housing conditions had no benefit over single housing. These preliminary findings support the use of group housing in cardiovascular safety assessment studies, not only for stand-alone studies, but also for integrated safety pharmacology investigations in regulatory toxicology studies. 3 Results Graphs