Body temperature measurement in mice during acute illness: implantable temperature transponder versus surface infrared thermometry

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 3526 - 10
• Main Authors: Mei, Jie, Riedel, Nico, Grittner, Ulrike, Endres, Matthias, Banneke, Stefanie, Emmrich, Julius Valentin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 23.02.2018; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/250/256/2516; 64/60; 692/308/1426; Body temperature; Endotoxins; Humanities and Social Sciences; Hypothermia; Laboratory animals; Learning algorithms; Lipopolysaccharides; multidisciplinary; Radio frequency identification; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Standardization; Surface temperature; Temperature effects; Temperature measurement; Transponders
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-22020-6

Body temperature is a valuable parameter in determining the wellbeing of laboratory animals. However, using body temperature to refine humane endpoints during acute illness generally lacks comprehensiveness and exposes to inter-observer bias. Here we compared two methods to assess body temperature in mice, namely implanted radio frequency identification (RFID) temperature transponders (method 1) to non-contact infrared thermometry (method 2) in 435 mice for up to 7 days during normothermia and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) endotoxin-induced hypothermia. There was excellent agreement between core and surface temperature as determined by method 1 and 2, respectively, whereas the intra- and inter-subject variation was higher for method 2. Nevertheless, using machine learning algorithms to determine temperature-based endpoints both methods had excellent accuracy in predicting death as an outcome event. Therefore, less expensive and cumbersome non-contact infrared thermometry can serve as a reliable alternative for implantable transponder-based systems for hypothermic responses, although requiring standardization between experimenters.