Ferrets are widely employed to study the pathogenicity, transmissibility, and tropism of influenza viruses. However, inherent variations in inoculation methods, sampling schemes, and experimental designs are often overlooked when contextualizing or aggregating data between laboratories, leading to potential confusion or misinterpretation of results. Here, we provide a comprehensive overview of parameters to consider when planning an experiment using ferrets, collecting data from the experiment, and placing results in context with previously performed studies. This review offers information that is of particular importance for researchers in the field who rely on ferret data but do not perform the experiments themselves. Furthermore, this review highlights the breadth of experimental designs and techniques currently available to study influenza viruses in this model, underscoring the wide heterogeneity of protocols currently used for ferret studies while demonstrating the wealth of information which can benefit risk assessments of emerging influenza viruses.

中文翻译：

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雪貂流感病毒的发病机理和传播模型的复杂性。

雪貂被广泛用于研究流感病毒的致病性，传播性和嗜性。但是，当对实验室之间的数据进行情境化或汇总时，接种方法，采样方案和实验设计的内在变化往往会被忽略，从而导致潜在的混淆或对结果的误解。在这里，我们提供了有关使用雪貂计划实验，从实验中收集数据以及将结果与先前进行的研究相结合时要考虑的参数的全面概述。这篇综述提供了对于该领域研究人员特别重要的信息，这些研究人员依赖于雪貂数据但自己不进行实验。此外，