Critical care of sub-lethal irradiated transgenic mice using a complete soft food formula-DietGel76A™.

The objective of this research is to determine whether the administration of a complete soft food formula to sub-lethal irradiated animals from three different transgenic mouse strains over a period of 21 consecutive days will have a significant impact on the clinical signs, and the general survival rate of the animals. Our hypothesis is that using DietGel76A™, along with an antibiotic treatment, strict handling and manipulation procedures, the general mortality rate, as well as the onset of the clinical signs between the treated animals and the control animals, will be significantly lower. This hypothesis was confirmed for the C57BL/6 mice. However, the treatment with DietGel76A™ had only a very limited impact on the recovery of more irradiation sensitive strains (CD45.1 and mostly NRG). Further studies must be conducted on mice from these strains in order to assess whether mice belonging to more sensitive strains should be on DietGel76A™ for a longer period of time (at least 42days post irradiation).