TY - JOUR A1 - Carvalho, José Joao A1 - Walter, Astrid A1 - Baermann, Yvonne A1 - Weller, Michael G. A1 - Panne, Ulrich A1 - Schenk, J.A. A1 - Schneider, Rudolf T1 - Non-invasive monitoring of immunization progress in mice via IgG from feces N2 - A non-invasive method to monitor the humoral immune response in mice after immunization is described. From fecal pellets of an individual mouse, a sufficient amount of active immunoglobulins or their fragments can be extracted to perform a regular examination of the status of the immune response by immunoassay. Hapten-specific antibodies from the feces of mice from three immunization trials showed very similar characteristics to those obtained from serum at a given date. Therefore, it can be suspected that some serum IgG enters the intestinal lumen and ends up in the feces, where they appear to be considerably stable. Hapten-specific IgAs were not found in the feces. Being able to analyze antibody titers in feces could be an interesting animal welfare refinement to standard practice that does not entail repeated blood sampling. KW - Immunization monitoring KW - IgG KW - Coproantibodies KW - Feces KW - Animal welfare KW - 3R concept PY - 2012 UR - http://iv.iiarjournals.org/content/26/1/63.full.pdf+html SN - 0258-851x VL - 26 IS - 1 SP - 63 EP - 70 PB - In vivo CY - Athens AN - OPUS4-25283 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -