Bioethical Reports of Animal Studies published in Dental Journals.

Objectives: Experimental animal models are widely used in dentistry. The ARRIVE guidelines are relevant to any study involving live animals. In Dentistry, there is no evidence available on the reporting of criteria and bioethical aspects with animals. This study aimed to determine the quality of bioethical reports in animal studies published in the dental journals with the highest impact index in 2016-2020 using the ARRIVE 2020 guideline.
Methods: We searched the five dental journals with the highest impact index in the Web of Science database (table 1). Inclusion and exclusion criteria were used for the selection of articles. The screening was carried out independently by four authors (P.R., C.V., N.M., and D.H.). Disagreements were resolved by discussion, and the level of agreement was by saturation calibration. To categorize each guideline of ARRIVE 2020: three categories were assigned: 0: does not comply, 1: partially complies, and 2: fully complies. For data management and analysis, we use RStudio 4.0.5. Additionally, averages, dispersion measures, and frequencies were calculated.
Results: 490 articles included, 75% and 60% partially report the description of results and experimental procedures, respectively. The items with the lowest compliance describe the size and selection of the sample of the animal model, inclusion-exclusion criteria, randomization, care, housing upbringing, and access to data (graphs 1 and 2).
Conclusions: In the analyzed journals, partial compliance was observed; this indicates that there is a margin to improve the report to the extent that they adhere to the ARRIVE guidelines in a complete way, improving the quality and reproducibility of the studies, as well as the translation of the basic science to applied science improving future treatments.