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Food intake and body weight in rodent studies: the devil is in the details

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In metabolic studies using rodents, body weight and food intake measurements seem easy to obtain, but several potential pitfalls can lead to erroneous data generation and interpretation. This Comment raises awareness of key conceptual and technical aspects that can increase the quality and reproducibility of this type of data.

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Fig. 1: How body weight (BW) and food intake (FI) are reported in the literature.

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Acknowledgements

The authors receive support from INSERM (D.C., P.Z., C.Q.), Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-18-CE14-0029, ANR-21-CE14-0018 to D.C.; ANR-20-CE14-0046 to C.Q.), University of Bordeaux’s IdEx ‘Investments for the Future’ program/GPR BRAIN_2030 (D.C.) and the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (to C.A., FRM-ARF201809006962). C.Q. is also supported by the Société Francophone du Diabète, Société Française d’Endocrinologie, Société Française de Nutrition, Institut Benjamin Delessert and the Fyssen Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bordeaux, INSERM, Neurocentre Magendie, U1215, F-33000, Bordeaux, France

    Camille Allard, Philippe Zizzari, Carmelo Quarta & Daniela Cota

Authors
  1. Camille Allard
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  2. Philippe Zizzari
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  3. Carmelo Quarta
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  4. Daniela Cota
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Contributions

C.A., P.Z., C.Q. and D.C. wrote the manuscript. C.A. and P.Z. generated the figure and the table.

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Correspondence to Daniela Cota.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Allard, C., Zizzari, P., Quarta, C. et al. Food intake and body weight in rodent studies: the devil is in the details. Nat Metab 4, 1424–1426 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-022-00658-x

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