Abstract
Blood samples from male and female rats were collected from four different sampling sites by the same technicians and analysed by the same procedures. The sampling sites were the abdominal aorta, orbital venous plexus, dorsal anastomotic orbital vein and sublingual vein. Values obtained in blood samples collected from peripheral sites were compared to those from the abdominal aorta, a sampling site which is normally unaffected by the sampling technique.
There were significant differences in haematological parameters, particularly in leucocyte counts which were higher in samples collected from the peripheral sites than in those withdrawn from the central one. No significant changes were observed in coagulation parameters. A significant increase in clinical chemistry parameters related to soft tissue damage, namely creatinine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase, hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase and aspartate aminotransferase, was seen in samples collected from both orbital sites.
From this study it can be concluded that haematological and biochemical values obtained from rats in toxicological studies using different sampling sites are reliable both in males and females, provided that they are compared to values obtained from the same site in untreated controls. Sampling from the orbital plexus proved to be the least invasive method.
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Bernardi, C., Monetal, D., Brughera, M. et al. Haematology and clinical chemistry in rats: Comparison of different blood collection sites. Comp Haematol Int 6, 160–166 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00368460
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00368460