Quarantine Health Monitoring

For quarantine health monitoring, Sentinel-Free Soiled Bedding (SFSB) has comparable sensitivity to Direct Colony Sampling (DCS) for quarantined animals, is a refinement, and takes less time. Therefore, SFSB is the preferred method for environment health monitoring of quarantined animals. 

DCS involves collection of feces, fur swabs, oral swabs, or blood to non/minimally-invasively sample specific animals or their cage microenvironment​. Based on a 2021 survey, DCS was most used methodology for diagnostic testing of quarantined animals. However, two hypothesis-based manuscripts in 2025 demonstrate that SFSB can be used in quarantine settings. They both conclude that SFSB is equal or more sensitive than DCS for multiple tested pathogens. This may be due to the fact that SFSB provides for a longer timeframe of sampling, allowing for detection of active and past infections in the soiled bedding over multiple weeks versus DCS PCR testing, which provides a diagnostic sample that represents only a single time point. Therefore, DCS only allows for detection of active infections. Furthermore, SFSB is now readily available through commercial diagnostic laboratories as a testing method for quarantine surveillance. 

In addition, SFSB is a refinement over DCS as it decreases and/or eliminates handling stress since it does not require taking samples directly from the animals. Instead, it relies on the soiled bedding available after cage change or removal of a known amount of bedding from the latrine area, if no cage change is scheduled. Finally, SFSB was also shown to have a time savings benefit over DCS. 

Citations: 

 

Luchins, K. R., Gates, K. V., Winn, C. B., Manuel, C. A., Pettan-Brewer, C., Foley, P. L., Peterson, N. C., Garner, J. P., Hanson, W., & LaFollette, M. R. (2023). A Cross-sectional Survey on Rodent Environmental Health Monitoring Practices: Benchmarking, Associations, and Barriers. Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS, 62(1), 64–73. https://doi.org/10.30802/AALAS-JAALAS-22-000086 

 

Luchins, K. R., Holliday, B., Rehman, F., Bowers, C. J., Ostdiek, A. M., Langan, G. P., & Felgenhauer, J. L. (2025). Evaluation of Direct Colony Sampling Compared with Sentinel-Free Soiled Bedding Testing for Murine Quarantine Programs. Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS, 64(5), 1–7. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.30802/AALAS-JAALAS-25-099 

 

Feinberg, A., Nickerson, K. P., Woods, C. L., Reimer, D., Henderson, K. S., Andersen, R. P., & Singh, B. (2025). Evaluation of Sentinel-Free Soiled Bedding as a Replacement for Direct Sampling in PCR Detection of Rodent Pathogens during Quarantine. Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS, 64(5), 1–12. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.30802/AALAS-JAALAS-25-028