TY - JOUR AU - Ghasemi, Asghar AU - Jeddi, Sajad AU - Kashfi, Khosrow PY - 2021/09/23 Y2 - 2024/03/19 TI - The laboratory rat: Age and body weight matter JF - EXCLI Journal JA - EXCLI J. VL - 20 IS - SE - Review articles DO - 10.17179/excli2021-4072 UR - https://www.excli.de/index.php/excli/article/view/4072 SP - 1431-1445 AB - <p>Animal experimentation helps us to understand human biology. Rodents and, in particular, rats are among the most common animals used in animal experiments. Reporting data on animal age, animal body weight, and animal postnatal developmental stages is not consistent, which can cause the failure to translate animal data to humans. This review summarizes age-related postnatal developmental stages in rats by addressing age-related changes in their body weights. The age and body weight of animals can affect drug metabolism, gene expression, metabolic parameters, and other dependent variables measured in animal studies. In addition, considering the age and the body weight of the animals is of particular importance in animal modeling of human diseases. Appropriate reporting of age, body weight, and the developmental stage of animals used in studies can improve animal to human translation.</p> ER -