Technology for Non-invasive High-throughput Breath Tracking in Rodents

ABSTRACTSignal Solutions has developed a novelnoninvasive and automated piezoelectric based sleep detection system for high throughput studies of sleep in miceand has recently expanded to rat studies as wellThe respiratory signal detected by the piezo sensor during sleep can be applied to investigate important health conditions including respiratory depression due to disease or drug useand other sleep disordered breathing conditions such as Central Sleep ApneaCSAwhich contributes to approximatelyof all sleep apnea in humansRodent models are essential to better understand respiratory control of breathing and to investigate respiratory abnormalities that present with diseaseCSA is increasingly recognized as an important contributing factor to the morbidity and mortality in a number of cardiovascular diseasesRespiratory depression can cause immediate death in diseases such as epilepsyand cases such as opiate overdoseor many other drugsPreclinical studies of such drugs in rodents would be greatly improved if there was an easier way to monitor breathingThe current methods used to monitor breathing in rodents are laboriousexpensiveand technically challengingPlethysmography is used to study breathing in rodentsand measures small breath volumes while the animal is confined to a small chamber This technology is expensive and stressful to the animaland can only be used over short periodsSleep disordered breathing is difficult to examine due to time required for the animal to adapt to the chamberand the limited time for keeping the animal confinedSignal Solutionssleep system is ideally suited to improve methods for assessing a variety of breathing variablesDuring sleep or quiet wakebreathing is the primary movementand our technology thus provides accurate respiratory tracesIn addition to breath ratesapneas are easily detectedand should be amenable to automatic scoringThe advantages over current technology for detection of altered breathing includes costeffectivenoninvasivestress freecontinuous monitoring that is high throughputand requires no surgery to monitor sleepAdapting our system for breathing applications will be made by meeting the following objectivesOptimize compatibility of our piezo sensor system with standard plethysmographyCollect simultaneous piezo and plethysmography data in both rats and mice under multiple conditionsScoreassess and quantify signals from the piezo system vsplethysmography for several respiratory variablesDevelop and optimize algorithms for automatic scoringand optimize performanceThe outcome of this project will be to provide researchers with a simple to usecost effective technology for basic and pre clinical studies in rodents investigating respiratory depressionsleep apneaand other disordered breathing during sleep that contribute to extensive morbidity and mortality in people Project NarrativeOur goal is to develop simplerless expensive and less stressful noninvasive technology to monitor breathing parameters in rodentsThis tool will provide wider access to monitor respiratory output in rodents to study breathing disorders associated with neurodegenerative diseasescentral sleep apneaheart failurespinal cord injury and drugs with dangerous respiratory related side effects