HEMATOLOGY AND CLINICAL-CHEMISTRY IN RATS - COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT BLOOD COLLECTION SITES

Blood samples from male and female rats were collected from four diffe rent sampling sites by the same technicians and analysed by the same p rocedures. The sampling sites were the abdominal aorta, orbital venous plexus, dorsal anastomotic orbital vein and sublingual vein. Values o btained in blood samples collected from peripheral sites were compared to those from the abdominal aorta, a sampling site which is normally unaffected by the sampling technique. There were significant differenc es in haematological parameters, particularly in leucocyte counts whic h were higher in samples collected from the peripheral sites than in t hose withdrawn from the central one. No significant changes were obser ved in coagulation parameters. A significant increase in clinical chem istry parameters related to soft tissue damage, namely creatinine kina se, lactate dehydrogenase, hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase and aspartate aminotransferase, was seen in samples collected from both orbital Sit es. From this study it can be concluded that haematological and bioche mical values obtained from rats in toxicological studies using differe nt sampling sites are reliable both in males and females, provided tha t they are compared to values obtained from the same site in untreated controls. Sampling from the orbital plexus proved to be the least inv asive method.