Previous exposure of mice to open Field doesn’t interfere in the results of elevated plus maze

Abstract

With the growth of research on experimental models, has also been increasing concern about animal welfare and has been suggested that every effort should be made to avoid excessive waste and sacrifice of animals. The open field (OF) and elevated plus maze (EPM) apparatuses are widely used in animal behavior, in addition EPM is the most validated test to evaluate anxiety, which is considered a strong confounding variable in this type of study. Thus, our study was conducted to determine whether prior exposure to the OF could produce anxiety, affecting the parameters in the EPM. We intend with this experiment to want whether one group of mice could be used in both tests, without producing any bias and avoiding the waste of animals.