The DEBtox method for the evaluation of effects of
toxicants makes use of the
Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) theory to quantify the effect. See the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries ...
(OECD) report, below, for a description of the method.
Toxicants, after they have been taken up by the organism and reached the target site, are assumed to affect one or more metabolic processes as specified in DEB theory.
Examples of such processes are the costs for maintenance, assimilation of energy from food, costs for producing somatic tissues, costs for the production of offspring, and hazards to the developing embryo.
A change in a single metabolic process has particular consequences for both growth and reproduction of the organism. Therefore, the specific pattern of growth and reproduction over time provides information about the affected process. In this way, the DEBtox method can be used to explain observed effect patterns over time, as well as the links between effects on body size and reproduction.
A key concept in this method is the determination of the
No Effect Concentration Measures of pollutant concentration are used to determine risk assessment in public health.
Industry is continually synthesizing new chemicals, the regulation of which requires evaluation of the potential danger for human health and the environm ...
. The DEBtox method is able to extract this parameter efficiently from experimental data by making use of knowledge of how effects will show up in the data if they would be present. Not all details of the DEB theory are used in this method; effects on survival as specified by the hazard model hardly uses any detail of the DEB theory, for instance, but is fully consistent with how DEB theory deals with
aging
Ageing ( BE) or aging ( AE) is the process of becoming older. The term refers mainly to humans, many other animals, and fungi, whereas for example, bacteria, perennial plants and some simple animals are potentially biologically immortal. In ...
as a result of the effects of
free radicals.
References
External links
DEBtox information site* {{small, (1.97
MiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
Toxicology tests