Adoption of Exhaust Air Dust Testing in SPF Rodent Facilities.

Reliable detection of unwanted microbial agents is essential for meaningful health monitoring in laboratory animal facilities. Most rodents at our institution are housed in IVC rack systems to minimize aerogenic transmission of infectious agents between cages. The most commonly used rodent health monitoring systems expose live sentinel rodents to soiled bedding collected from other rodent cages on IVC racks and subsequently test these soiled-bedding sentinels for evidence of infection with excluded agents.