Reduced Fasting Duration in Cynomolgus Monkeys Enhances Animal Welfare During Toxicology Studies

During toxicology studies, fasting animals prior to clinical pathology blood collection is believed to reduce variability in some clinical chemistry analytes. However, fasting adds stress to animals that are already stressed from the administration of potentially toxic doses of the test article. The purpose of this study was to assess the impacts of different fasting durations on cynomolgus monkeys' welfare during toxicology studies. To this end, we assessed the cynomolgus monkeys traditional and ancillary clinical pathology endpoints at different fasting times. We showed that most clinical pathology endpoints were largely comparable between different fasting times suggesting that cynomolgus monkeys could be fasted for as little as 4 hours for toxicology studies, as longer fasting times (up to 20 hours) resulted in stress, dehydration, and significant decreases in blood glucose- changes that impacts animal welfare. Shorter fasting times were associated with higher triglycerides variability among individual animals. Therefore, we propose that shorter fasting time (i.e., 4 hours) should be adequate for most toxicology studies except when: (1) parameters that could be affected by non-fasting conditions are important for safety and pharmacodynamic assessments (i.e., glucose and lipids) and (2) fasting would be needed for the bioavailability of an orally administered test article.

Automated summary

This study assessed the impacts of different fasting durations on cynomolgus monkeys' welfare during toxicology studies. The results showed that shorter fasting times (4 hours) had minimal effects on most clinical pathology endpoints, while longer fasting times (up to 20 hours) resulted in stress, dehydration, and significant decreases in blood glucose. Shorter fasting times were associated with higher variability in triglycerides among individual animals. Therefore, a shorter fasting time (4 hours) should be sufficient for most toxicology studies, except when certain parameters or bioavailability of an orally administered test article are important.