Refinement of oral gavage

There are several alternatives to oral gavage (left) in rodents, for example micropipette-guided drug administration (MDA, right). Picture by Rodent MDA Consortium 2024.

Oral gavage is an important drug administration technique that requires training to be performed competent. Even if performed competently and carefully, oral gavage can be stressful to laboratory animals and carries the risk of injury. There are several refinement options and alternatives to oral gavage available. The suitability of these refinements should be considered for each specific experiment carefully.

Refinement examples for rodents

• "Sugar coating" gavage needles, e.g. using sweet solutions that support the swallowing of the gavage needle/tube
• Habituation / training

Examples for alternatives to oral gavage (voluntary oral drug intake)

Some drugs or substances can be mixed with palatable food or fluids that are ingested voluntary by the animals. In many cases the voluntary oral intake of drugs resembles the situation in human patients better. There are several examples described in the literature or shared by experts (see also analgesia):

• Honey
• Nutella, peanut butter
• Mayonaise
• Jam, e.g. strawberry jam
• Jellies
• MDA (micropipette-guided drug administration) Method with diluted condensed milk
  • for mice see for example Schalbetter et al. or Scarborough et al. for rats Heraudeau et al.