Correlation study in skin and eye irritation between rabbits and humans based on published literatures.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlations in skin and eye irritations between rabbits and humans using published international databases. We selected 60 and 56 compounds for skin and eye irritation, respectively. When the reactions were divided into irritation-negative or irritation-positive, including corrosion, similar reactions between rabbits and humans were detected for 53 compounds in skin irritation and 54 compounds in eye irritation, showing rates of agreement in skin and eye as 88% and 96%, respectively. These findings revealed that correlation in skin and eye irritations between rabbits and humans were high. However, corrosion was observed in rabbit skin treated with 14 compounds, 4 of which showed similar changes in humans, and in rabbit eyes treated with 9 compounds, 1 of which revealed similar changes in humans. These findings indicated that the incidence of corrosion was higher in rabbits than in humans. Our results showed that the data on rabbit irritations in the skin and eye were useful for identifying risk of irritation in human.