This article is a distillation of the information presented in a poster of the same title that was first displayed at an IAT Middlesex Branch Trade Show Meeting in February 2012. The aim of the poster was to describe the testing methods and diagnosticroutes that are followed in identifying pathogenic organisms in routine rodent health monitoring programmes. For the sake of clarity the subject has been split into four sections, each describing a different discipline within health monitoring - Serology, Bacteriology, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing - specifically Helicobacter detection and Parasitology. For each section I will describe how the routine testing is carried out and then the steps which are taken if a pathogenic organism is possibly detected, showing the different testing methods that are used to confirm the finding and then identify the exact organism present. It will become clear that the boundaries between the different disciplines are often crossed with, for example, serological and PCR techniques being used to confirm bacterial identifications or parasitology findings.
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