A Study to Assess the Quality of Reporting of Animal Research Studies Published in PubMed Indexed Journals: A...

A complete and concise pre-clinical experimental research gives detailed information about the disease-specific model, prevents duplication, and saves animal life, money, as well as time. It will also allow readers to effectively interpret and evaluate the work and ensure that others can replicate the experiments described. The present study was conducted to assess the adequacy of animal details provided in published experimental animal studies.

All in vivo studies published as full-text articles in two PubMed indexed journals (one Indian and one international) from January 2011 to December 2019 and satisfying the inclusion norms were included. A checklist consisting of 27 discrete items subdivided under three domains, viz. animal details, disease model, and guidelines, was used. Every article was assessed by two investigators independently for determining the reporting quality.

One hundred and seventy-seven studies satisfied the inclusion criteria. Age or age range was reported in 20.34% of the articles in the Indian journal and 5.88% articles in the international journal (p=0.019). Housing and husbandry details were reported in all the articles published in the international journal and 82.7% of the articles in the Indian journal (p=0.001). The disease/pathology studied was given in 70.62% of articles published in the Indian journal and 86.27% of articles published in the international journal (p=0.029). None of the studies provided details of genetic modification, health status, sample size calculation, steps taken to minimize bias, and implementation of randomization.

There is a need for optimal reporting of certain relevant animal details, disease models, experimental procedures, sample size calculation, and adherence to guidelines by the researchers for which the reporting was found to be sub-par to improve reproducibility and validity of animal research.