Hot-cold plates are used in research laboratories in the field of animal science. They are utilised to test the effectiveness of analgesics by subjecting subjects to a range of temperatures. This blog post will look at what hot-cold plates are and how they work.
What Is A Hot-cold Plate?
A hot-cold plate is an instrument that combines both hot and cold stimuli that can be controlled in small measures. The device is used on small animals, such as mice and rats, to test their sensitivity against varying degrees of temperature and pain threshold.
Hot-cold plates are primarily used to determine how effective analgesics are. Analgesics are drugs that relieve different types of pain without causing the taker to lose consciousness and are used frequently in everyday life.
Additional names for these plates include thermal plates and thermal platforms, which work similarly to hot-cold plates.
How Do Hot-cold Plates Work?
Typically a hot-cold plate is fitted within a container attached to a microprocessor. The container helps prevent the rodent from jumping off or out of the instrument, and the microprocessor enables the analyst to control the plate’s temperature.
The cold plate tests cold-induced allodynia and hyperalgesia, which cannot be done with a single hot plate. At the same time, the hot plates are used to test how effective the analgesics are, as the analysts can observe the rodents’ response to the heat-induced pain.
The key behaviours that analysts will use to measure the rodents’ response to pain are jumping (a response that shows the desire to escape) and paw licking (a response that shows pain is felt). As soon as these behaviours are exhibited, the analyst can promptly decrease or increase the temperature to a more appropriate level and prevent further pain.
What Hot-cold Plates Do San Diego Instruments Supply?
San Diego Instruments supplies one incremental hot-cold plate for scientific research purposes. The instrument is the original IITC Life Science hot-cold plate, used as an analgesia meter for mice and rats.
A microprocessor controls the instrument with a display screen. The system allows the analyst to monitor cooling and heating and adjust temperature between -10oC and 70oC. Temperature changes can be made in increments of 0.1oC.
Additional parameters that can be programmed include:
- Length of the test (set in .01 seconds)
- Starting temperature
- Stopping temperature
- Upper/lower cut-off limits
- Date and time
- Number of the subject
The benefits of the ITTC hot-cold plate are the programmable parameters and the range of temperatures it can operate within. Other additional benefits are:
- Animal enclosure included
- Temperature increase and decrease occur rapidly
- Precise digital control
- Recorded data can be printed out
If you would like more information about the IITC hot-cold plate or any of our SD Instruments, please do not hesitate to contact us.