Guidelines for Assessing the Health and Condition of Mice

With the development of transgenic and targeted mutant (knockout) technologies over the past 10 years, there has been an increase in the number of investigators using mice; the number of mice used in biomedical research; the number of mice bred and maintained to their natural life spans; and the number of mice with potentially adverse or debilitating phenotypes. The authors present practical guidelines for assessing and monitoring the health of these mice.