Weight loss is a sufficient and economical single outcome measure of murine dextran sulfate sodium colitis.

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD: Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis) are becoming common around the world without a cure. Animal models of colitis have become instrumental in IBD research. The dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) induced murine colitis model is likely the most utilized due to its simplicity and reproducibility with over 4000 publications on PubMed, where weight loss is the most commonly used and reliable positive correlate. We predicted at current state of art, that the DSS colitis model can be optimized by using weight loss as a single cost-saving outcome measure. Twenty recent and consecutive publications using the DSS model in PubMed were selected for review. Guarded cost estimations for additional outcome measures of colitis beyond weight loss were performed. In all manuscripts (100%), weight loss corroborated the conclusions. Average excess cost for examining additional measures of colitis was approximately $6700 per publication. Two studies (10.5%) were estimated to have spent over $20,000 in excess. Additional measures of colitis either supported the final conclusions found with weight loss, or lead to indeterminate results. Potential annual savings from following our guidance were calculated to be over $60,000 for and IBD lab. We conclude that weight loss is a sufficient, objective, and economical outcome measure of DSS-induced colitis in mice.