Method for voluntary oral administration of drugs in mice

Substances are commonly administered orally in mouse experiments. Here, I describe how to voluntarily administer substances orally in a time- and dose-controlled manner to laboratory mice. This minimizes injury potential and stress often associated with the commonly used intragastric gavage technique. Here, the drug is incorporated into artificially sweetened and flavored jelly and given to mice previously trained to eat the jelly. This can be used for acute and chronic oral drug treatment or for oral glucose tolerance tests. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Zhang et al. (2010) and Cox et al. (2010).