Procedure and Care in the Exodontia of Molars in Albino Rats for Experimental Purposes

The laboratory rats offer a mammalian system model characterized functionally and serve as standard organism for the analysis of an important number of biomedical features: cardiovascular, metabolic, neurological, neurobehavioral diseases, organ transplantation, autoimmune diseases, cancer, renal diseases, etc. They offer a number of advantages for the modeling of human diseases, developing new therapies and in the study of responses to environmental agents [1]. Molar exodontia is frequent in albino rats for experimental purposes and because the literature is not very detailed in the exodontia procedures it is decided to carry out this work in order to provide useful information to researchers who need to perform this procedure and thus cause less stress and suffering in the animals used. This work is based on a study to evaluate the effects of unilateral mastication on the temporomandibular joint using as animal model rats to which exodontia of posterior teeth was practiced, previous endorsement of the Bioethics Committee of the Faculty of Dentistry of the Central University of Venezuela (U.C.V.). The experimental work was carried out in the JM Vargas School of Medicine of the U.C.V. Pilot tests were carried out on animals 5 weeks old and after having faced the first contact and having refined the technique, 21 Wistar rats were used. The Wistar rat is currently one of the most popular strains of albino rats used for laboratory research. It is characterized by its wide head, long ears, and with a tail length that is always shorter than its body length. The Sprague Dawley rat and Long-Evans strains of rats were developed from Wistar rats. Wistar rats are more active than other strains such as Sprague Dawley rats. Wistar rats are rats belonging to the species Rattusnorvegicus and were developed at the Wistar Institute in 1906 for use in biological and medical research [2,3].