RESUMO
BACKGROUND: The Mauritian cynomolgus macaque (Macaca fascicularis) is widely used in biomedical research. Determining reference intervals for biochemical and haematological analytes provides an important tool for clinical diagnosis and pre-clinical research. METHODS: Blood samples from 736 Mauritian long-tailed macaques were analysed to determine reference intervals of 13 biochemical and 10 haematological analytes. The need for partitioning the reference interval between males and females was determined. To examine the variation associated with age, body weight and sex on the analytes, our correlating, multivariate data set was first reduced using principal component analysis, and then the effect of these characteristics on factor scores was examined using GLM analysis. RESULTS: Partitioning of reference intervals, based on sex, was recommended for albumin, alkaline phosphatase and mean corpuscular haemoglobin. Sex significantly influenced the concentration of lymphocytes, granulocytes and white blood cells. CONCLUSION: These findings provide useful reference data for research involving Mauritian long-tailed macaques.