Abstract

CASTRO, Gerardo Daniel. Dose-dependent transitions in mechanisms of toxicity and risk assessment in toxicology. Acta bioquím. clín. latinoam. [online]. 2013, vol.47, n.3. ISSN 0325-2957.

In Toxicology, many challenges arise from the increasing complexity of environmental scenarios conditioning human diseases. When analyzing the toxic dose response, it often becomes apparent that there may be several underlying processes for any xenobiotic action on a living organism. It is likely that the critical steps, limiting in any mechanism of toxicity, may be overwhelmed with increased exposure, indicating the emergence of new forms of tissue injury at higher doses. Therefore, transitions might occur in a dose-dependent manner in the main mechanism for toxicity, having a significant impact on the performance of the collection of baseline data for risk assessment. One explanation for the linear dose-response relationships in series is dose-dependent transition from a sequence of steps chained mechanistically, saturable rate limiting steps in the process, leading from exposition to the expression of one or more forms of toxic response. The analysis of these phenomena has a great relevance in practical terms, that is, to the effects on the regulation of the use and exposure to hazardous substances in different human situations.

Keywords : risk assessment; mechanisms of toxicity; biomonitoring; dose response.

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