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Mol Pain. 2011 Jul 29;7:55. doi: 10.1186/1744-8069-7-55.
The
Rat Grimace Scale: a partially automated method for quantifying pain in the
laboratory rat via facial expressions.
Sotocinal
SG, Sorge RE, Zaloum A, Tuttle AH, Martin LJ, Wieskopf JS, Mapplebeck JC, Wei
P, Zhan S, Zhang S, McDougall JJ, King OD, Mogil JS.
Abstract
We
recently demonstrated the utility of quantifying spontaneous pain in mice via
the blinded coding of facial expressions. As the majority of preclinical pain
research is in fact performed in the laboratory rat, we attempted to modify the
scale for use in this species. We present herein the Rat Grimace Scale, and
show its reliability, accuracy, and ability to quantify the time course of
spontaneous pain in the intraplantar complete Freund's adjuvant, intraarticular
kaolin-carrageenan, and laparotomy (post-operative pain) assays. The scale's
ability to demonstrate the dose-dependent analgesic efficacy of morphine is
also shown. In addition, we have developed software, Rodent Face Finder®, which
successfully automates the most labor-intensive step in the process. Given the
known mechanistic dissociations between spontaneous and evoked pain, and the
primacy of the former as a clinical problem, we believe that widespread
adoption of spontaneous pain measures such as the Rat Grimace Scale might lead
to more successful translation of basic science findings into clinical
application.
PMID:
21801409 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] PMCID: PMC3163602
Links
to full article
http://mpx.sagepub.com/content/7/1744-8069-7-55.full.pdf+html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3163602/