Incidence of Spontaneous Ocular Lesions in Laboratory Animals

The purpose of this study was to establish a database of spontaneous ocular lesions in various laboratory animal species and to facilitate the evaluation of study findings in a preclinical toxicity study. Ophthalmologic examination (OE) records for laboratory animals before experiments from 2008 to 2023 were collected from the Provantis system at WuXi AppTec (Suzhou, China), including 23,388 CD-1 mice, 1,838 C57BL/6J mice, 193,076 Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats, 2,295 Wistar rats, 1,875 New Zealand White (NZW) rabbits, 1,794 Dutch belted (DB) rabbits, 32,919 Beagle dogs, 1,153 Bama minipigs, 23,706 cynomolgus monkeys, and 310 rhesus monkeys. These raw data were analyzed using the Fisher exact test. The most apparent features were as follows. SD and Wistar rats showed significantly higher incidences of corneal opacity (72.50% and 77.63%) compared with the other species, as well as persistent hyaloid artery (7.93%) and persistent pupillary membrane (2.75%); C57BL/6J mice had a significantly higher incidence of lens opacity (75.57%) compared with the other species; CD-1mice had more eccentric pupils (6.97%); rabbits were observed with more vitreous opacity and conjunctival hyperemia (12.88% and 1.88%); nontapetal redness was observed in dogs (2.83%); Bama minipigs showed higher incidences in ocular discharge, lens pigmentation, and esotropia (2.78%, 3.14%, and 2.25%); and leopard fundus was mostly found in monkeys (10.32%). The discrepancies between our results and relevant literature may be attributed to variations in genetic background, ingredients of diet, study sample size, and examination records. This study underlines the importance of establishing an in-house spontaneous lesion database.