Animal pain research criticised
Using animals to research pain has "limited value" and should
be replaced by newer technologies, argues a panel of medical
experts from across England.
Animal tests can only simulate some aspects of chronic pain
and are too simplistic, their report says. With newer
brain-imaging techniques, more studies could be done in
humans, they write in the journal Neuroimage. Ministers said
at present "licensed animal use remains essential to develop improved healthcare technologies".
There are few effective and safe treatments for chronic pain,
such as that suffered by people with osteoarthritis and
fibromyalgia, the researchers from London, Manchester,
Liverpool and Oxford say.
Animal experiments are commonly used in pain research, both
under anaesthesia and with conscious animals.
However, as well as raising ethical questions, they are not an
accurate mimic of the processes of human pain, the experts
concluded.
At a workshop organised by charities and organisations funding
or promoting alternatives to animal experiments, such as the
RSPCA and UK Human Tissues Bank, the experts said modern,
powerful brain imaging had the potential to change how some
experiments were done.
It means healthy volunteers and patients suffering from pain
could take part in studies where researchers can monitor the
effects of pain and pain relief in the brain using MRI or
other scans. Other research in the laboratory using human
cells and tissues could support the work done in humans, they
said.
'Not representative'
One of the authors of the report, Professor Qasim Aziz, from
the Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry,
uses imaging to study how the brain interprets pain signals in
patients suffering from disorders such as irritable bowel
syndrome and unexplained chest pain.
"In my research, animal models don't represent human patients
sufficiently well," he said. "And that's a problem that extends across pain research as a
whole. New and highly sophisticated brain-imaging technology
is providing vital insights that animal research has failed to
produce. I would like to see far greater uptake of these and
other human-relevant approaches to pain research."
However, he added that there were instances where animal
research was needed, such as in drug dose experiments.
Dr Gill Langley, of the Dr Hadwen Trust, a medical research
charity set up to promote non-animal research techniques, also
helped to write the report.
She said: "It is critical that these often simplistic
experiments are replaced with more advanced techniques that
don't involve inflicting animal suffering."
Home Office Minister Meg Hillier said under the terms of the
Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, the use of animals
for experimental and other scientific purposes can be
authorised only when it is the only option and can be shown to
be justified. "Advances with non-animal test methods continue to be made,
but at present licensed animal use remains essential to
develop improved healthcare technologies."
Alan Silman, medical director of the Arthritis Research
Campaign, agreed that animals were not good models of pain in
humans. "We lack really effective ways of studying pain, which
is why perhaps there has been no real advance in understanding
why people with arthritis get pain."