Physiology of lactation and methods of milking laboratory animals

Since the end of the last century, researchers have been collecting milk from laboratory animals as part of scientific experiments. Their goal was to collect existing knowledge about methods of obtaining milk from laboratory animals, to identify the influence of the environment, drugs, hormones on the volume and quality of milk, to determine the composition of milk and, most importantly, to potentially study the excretion of substances with milk. The aim of the review was to systematize and summarize information on the physiology of lactation and methods of animal milk sampling used in preclinical studies. Literature search in Russian and English languages was performed in Google Scholar, eLIBRARY, CyberLeninka, and PubMed databases using keywords. The aim of the search was to discover the most popular and cited publications on a given topic. The methods of culling in different animal species are very variable: researchers suggest the use of stimulants, sedatives, mechanical suction, or simple manual decanting methods, which makes the procedure accessible in all conditions, but increases the time spent on it. It is impossible to select a universal technique for each type of laboratory animal, as well as to apply one method for each study of drug kinetics in milk.