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When you care and manage laboratory animals and carry out animal experiments at Kyushu University, please comply with the "Act on Welfare and Management of Animals", the "Standards Relating to the Care and Management of Laboratory Animals and Relief of Pain", the "Fundamental Guidelines for Animal Experiments and Related Activities", the "Kyushu University Animal Experiment Regulations" and the "Administrative Instructions Kyushu University Animal Experiment Regulations".
In order to feed and keep test animals and carry out animal experiments, you need to take educational training and register as an animal experiments personnel in advance.
If you have not received the educational training and registered yet, please contact your department Office for an application.
Among the pharmaceutical-grade barbiturate anesthetics previously used as euthanasia agents for laboratory animals, pentobarbital injection is currently unavailable. (Sales of the brand-name products Nembutal and Somnopentyl were discontinued in March 2009 and January 2019, respectively.) Similarly, secobarbital injection (brand name: Ionar), which is used as an euthanasia agent, was discontinued in March 2023; therefore, once current stock is depleted, it will no longer be available. Consequently, we ask that you consider alternative euthanasia methods that do not use the aforementioned drugs, such as over-anesthesia using inhalants. Please note that from an ethical standpoint, pharmaceutical-grade anesthetics and euthanasia agents are required for use on laboratory animals; therefore, the use of reagent-grade pentobarbital and secobarbital is not recommended. However, if the use of reagent-grade pentobarbital is necessary to advance your research, the Animal Experimentation Committee will determine whether its use is permissible. If you intend to use it, please include the scientific rationale for its use in your animal experimentation protocol.
Since the nervous systems of newborn mice and rats younger than 7 days old are not sufficiently developed to perceive pain or distress, analgesia or anesthesia is not required during experiments or euthanasia; however, it is generally considered necessary to administer analgesia, anesthesia, or similar measures for newborns 7 days old or older. Considering that newborns are resistant to hypoxia until two weeks of age, it is recommended to select methods other than carbon dioxide gas for analgesia, anesthesia, or euthanasia in newborn mice and rats. (See the Japanese Society for Laboratory Animal Medicine’s “Statement on Analgesia, Anesthesia, and Euthanasia of Rodent Fetuses and Newborns (2nd Edition, 2015):https://jclam.org/statement#seimei2015
