A critique of the use of hormesis in risk assessment.
Hum Exp Toxicol
; 24(5): 249-53, 2005 May.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-16004188
ABSTRACT
There are severe problems and limitations with the use of hormesis as the principal dose-response default assumption in risk assessment. These problems and limitations include (a) unknown prevalence of hormetic dose-response curves; (b) random chance occurrence of hormesis and the shortage of data on the repeatability of hormesis; (c) unknown degree of generalizability of hormesis; (d) there are dose-response curves that are not hormetic, therefore hormesis cannot be universally generalized; (e) problems of post hoc rather than a priori hypothesis testing; (f) a possible large problem of 'false positive' hormetic data sets which have not been extensively replicated; (g) the 'mechanism of hormesis' is not understood at a rigorous scientific level; (h) in some cases hormesis may merely be the overall sum of many different mechanisms and many different dose-response curves - some beneficial and some toxic. For all of these reasons, hormesis should not now be used as the principal dose-response default assumption in risk assessment. At this point, it appears that hormesis is a long way away from common scientific acceptance and wide utility in biomedicine and use as the principal default assumption in a risk assessment process charged with ensuring public health protection.
Search on Google
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Toxicology
/
Risk Assessment
/
Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
Type of study:
Etiology_studies
/
Prevalence_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Animals
/
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Hum Exp Toxicol
Journal subject:
TOXICOLOGIA
Year:
2005
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States