This is a huge advance for both animals and science: at the call of PETA UK, the use of the forced swim test (FST) to simulate human depression is likely to end in the country!
Influential scientists at the UK’s Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Authority concluded in a scientific article published online that FST and similar animal tests cannot predict the efficacy of potential new antidepressants. The authors cite PETA’s work with pharmaceutical companies to end a trial in which small animals are thrown into glasses of water and forced to swim to safety.
After reviewing the evidence and seeking expert opinion, the authors independently reached the same conclusions as the PETA scientists: FST is not a model of depression and may even rule out new effective medications for people. British regulators of animal experiments commissioned this document, so it’s safe to say that the test’s absurdity has finally been recognized and scientists must now develop more effective, ethical and human-friendly alternatives.
More than half a century of terror
Since its inception in the 1950s and its failed rise in popularity in the late 1970s, FST has been used by experimenters in crude attempts to study human depression and find new antidepressants. The experimenters put mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, or gerbils in unavoidable containers filled with water. Frightened animals try to escape, trying to climb the walls of glasses or even diving under the water in search of a way out. They row violently, desperately trying to keep their heads above the water. Eventually they will start swimming.
According to published reports, this test has become widespread, with up to 700 articles describing FST experiments published over the course of a year. Each experiment can use tens to hundreds of small animals.
Unnecessary science
Experimenters have argued that FST can be used to measure despair and test potential antidepressants in humans, but experts disagree.
The test does not accurately predict whether a drug will act as an antidepressant in humans. It gives positive results for compounds that are not prescribed as antidepressants in humans, such as caffeine, and negative results for some compounds. Antidepressants that may work in humans may be wrongly rejected on the basis of a test, as the authors of a new article point out:
“[I]f Over-reliance on the FST as a gatekeeper of clinical development means potentially effective AD. [antidepressants] inactive in the test will remain unknown. In the absence of conclusive data on the neurobiological basis of FST and its translatability to [humans], it remains an opportunity. “
After learning from PETA scientists and our international affiliates, most major drug manufacturers, including Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, AbbVie Inc., Roche, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk A / S, Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, and Bristol Myers Squibb, have already done left the FST in the dust.
PETA UK previously wrote to the country’s Animal Regulation Department, which initiated this review, regarding the validity of the FST and the dubious grounds on which experimenters are entitled to use it.
The test has also been banned by two major research universities in the UK, including King’s College London, where another author of the article works.
The scientists who wrote the new article also endorse the widely accepted fact that the FST is “no longer seen as an animal model of depression.”
It is clear that trials will soon become a thing of the past.
Take Action to Protect Animals Today
Despite the industry’s significant departure from the FST, there are notable protests: Eli Lilly and Sanofi are hesitating. Convince them to be on the right side of the story – a decision that most of their competitors have already made – and forbid cruel trial:
Eli Lilly: Forbid the cruel forced swimming test!
Tell Sanofi to stop his near extinction tests.