Cardiac blood sampling for glucose estimations in the laboratory zebrafish (Danio rerio)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48165/jlas.2026.9.2.1Keywords:
Blood collection, anesthesia, cardiacAbstract
The zebrafish model has gained widespread popularity among the global research community due to its ever-increasing use in basic biology research, drug discovery, chemical safety assessment, and other areas. Several laboratory procedures, including the estimation of hematological, biochemical, and serological parameters in healthy and disease conditions, require blood sampling from laboratory animals. In zebrafish, blood is one of the least-explored tissues due to the organ ism’s small size. The existing methods are tedious and difficult to obtain blood from this species. The researchers used several approaches to collect blood samples from different sites, including lateral incision, decapitation, tail amputation, and cardiac puncture. In all these techniques, researchers have used different numbers of animals and obtained varying volumes of blood. The scarcity of blood obtained by these methods also limits the analysis of many biochemical and cytological parameters. We adopted a cardiac puncture approach for blood sampling in anesthetized adult zebrafish. The blood sampling from adult male and female zebrafish was successfully carried out, and the collected blood volume ranged between 2-10 μl per adult fish. The blood specimens were used for the random blood glucose estimations. The mean blood glucose levels measured were lower in males than in females in all five lines, with a significant difference in the AB line. Due to the significant mortality anticipated with this approach, this method may not be suitable for repeated sampling; however, it can be considered for terminal bleeding.
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