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Animalgesic effects

Nature Medicine volume 16, pages 1237–1240 (2010)Cite this article

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Animal experiments have produced an explosion of information about pain, but this knowledge has failed to yield new painkillers for use in humans. This abysmal track record has led to calls to overhaul the design of preclinical studies. Elie Dolgin goes to great pains to learn how monitoring rodents' facial expressions and brain activity might offer a more effective and humane way to test drug candidates.

Two months earlier, Mogil and his colleagues at McGill University in Montreal had published a paper detailing a new index for measuring pain in mice based on the rodents' facial expressions, and they had used the word 'severe' to describe the most pained faces. Mogil believes that the author of the e-mail misinterpreted this as meaning that the team had exposed the mice to severe intensities of pain, and he wrote back to clarify that they experienced only moderate distress.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Elie Dolgin is a news editor with Nature Medicine in New York.,

    Elie Dolgin

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  1. Elie Dolgin
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Dolgin, E. Animalgesic effects. Nat Med 16, 1237–1240 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1110-1237

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1110-1237

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