Summary of the Workshop on Issues in Risk Assessment: Quantitative Methods for Developmental Toxicology

This report summarizes the proceedings of a conference on quantitative methods for assessing the risks of developmental toxicants. The conference was planned by a subcommittee of the National Research Council's Committee on Risk Assessment Methodology ⁴ in conjunction with staff from several federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, and Health and Welfare Canada. Issues discussed at the workshop included computerized techniques for hazard identification, use of human and animal data for defining risks in a clinical setting, relationships between end points in developmental toxicity testing, reference dose calculations for developmental toxicology, analysis of quantitative dose-response data, mechanisms of developmental toxicity, physiologically based pharmacokinetic models, and structure-activity relationships. Although a formal consensus was not sought, many participants favored the evolution of quantitative techniques for developmental toxicology risk assessment, including the replacement of lowest observed adverse effect levels (LOAELs) and no observed adverse effect levels (NOAELs) with the benchmark dose methodology.     

A Comparative Pharmacokinetic Estimate of Mercury in U.S. Infants Following Yearly Exposures to Inactivated Influenza Vaccines Containing Thimerosal

The use of thimerosal preservative in childhood vaccines has been largely eliminated over the past decade in the United States because vaccines have been reformulated in single‐dose vials that do not require preservative. An exception is the inactivated influenza vaccines, which are formulated in both multidose vials requiring preservative and preservative‐free single‐dose vials. As part of an ongoing evaluation by USFDA of the safety of biologics throughout their lifecycle, the infant body burden of mercury following scheduled exposures to thimerosal preservative in inactivated influenza vaccines in the United States was estimated and compared to the infant body burden of mercury following daily exposures to dietary methylmercury at the reference dose established by the USEPA. Body burdens were estimated using kinetic parameters derived from experiments conducted in infant monkeys that were exposed episodically to thimerosal or MeHg at identical doses. We found that the body burden of mercury (AUC) in infants (including low birth weight) over the first 4.5 years of life following yearly exposures to thimerosal was two orders of magnitude lower than that estimated for exposures to the lowest regulatory threshold for MeHg over the same time period. In addition, peak body burdens of mercury following episodic exposures to thimerosal in this worst‐case analysis did not exceed the corresponding safe body burden of mercury from methylmercury at any time, even for low‐birth‐weight infants. Our pharmacokinetic analysis supports the acknowledged safety of thimerosal when used as a preservative at current levels in certain multidose infant vaccines in the United States.     

Uncertainties in Pharmacokinetic Modeling for Perchloroethylene: II. Comparison of Model Predictions with Data for a Variety of Different Parameters

In this paper we compare expectations derived from 10 different human physiologically based pharmacokinetic models for perchloroethylene with data on absorption via inhalation, and concentrations in alveolar air and venous blood. Our most interesting finding is that essentially all of the models show a time pattern of departures of predictions of air and blood levels relative to experimental data that might be corrected by more sophisticated model structures incorporating either (a) heterogeneity of the fat compartment (with respect to either perfusion or partition coefficients or both) or (b) intertissue diffusion of perchloroethylene between the fat and muscle/VRG groups. Similar types of corrections have recently been proposed to reduce analogous anomalies in the fits of pharmacokinetic models to the data for several volatile anesthetics.^(17-20) A second finding is that models incorporating resting values for alveolar ventilation in the region of 5.4 L/min seemed to be most compatible with the most reliable set of perchloroethylene uptake data.     

气相色谱——电子捕获法宝测定人血浆中阿那曲唑浓度

建立测定人血浆中阿那曲唑浓度的方法。方法:用气相色谱-电子捕获法分离分析阿那曲唑和内标物(地西泮),采用50％苯基甲基础酮毛细管柱(30m×0.53mm,0.5μm),以高纯氮(99.999％)为载气,压力为170kPa,尾吹为60mL·min~(-1)。进样口温度为260℃,炉温为220℃。~(63)Ni电子捕获测器,检测器温度为260℃。血样在碱性条件下,用甲基叔丁醚1次提取。结果:血药浓度测定的线性范围为1.325～106μ·L~(-1)。低、中、高血药浓度(5.3,21.2,53.0μg·L~(-1))提取回收率分别为76.8％,87.0％,78.7％。日内和日间精密度均小于9％。20名中国健康男性志愿者单剂量口服阿那曲唑2mg后,0.55～132h内血药浓度在2.8～53.2μg·L~(-1)的范围内。结论:该法简便、准确、灵敏,可用于阿那曲唑生物利用度和药代动力学研究。     

用HPLE—荧光检测法研究维拉帕米在大鼠体内的药代动力学和组织分布特性

建立维拉帕米的反相高效液相色谱分析方法,并对其大鼠体内过程特性进行分析研完。方法:生物样品在碱性条件下经过正已烷一乙醚(30:70)提取,用Kromasil C_(18)反相柱(150mm×4.6mm,5μm),甲醇-水-三乙胺(70:30:0.1)为流动相,流速1.0mL.min~(-1),荧光检测波长为λ_(ex)275nm和λ_(ex)315nm。结果:方法回收率为92.3％～104.8％,测定血药浓度线性范围为8.5～85ng.mL~(-1)(r=0.9992),最低检测限0.6ng.ml~-。SD大鼠一次性灌胃盐酸维拉帕米片后血浆C-t曲线呈二室开放模型,达峰时间为(0.28±0.1)h。给药1.25h时,在主要的效应器官的浓度分布特点是:C_心>C_(大脑)>C_(小脑),在主要消除器官的浓度分布特点是:C_肝>C_肾>C_脾。结论:本法准确,灵敏度较高,可用于维拉帕米的体内过程研究。维拉帕米的肝首过效应应引起重视,主要由肾脏排泄。     

Expert Scientific Judgment and Cancer Risk Assessment: A Pilot Study of Pharmacokinetic Data

When high-dose tumor data are extrapolated to low doses, it is typically assumed that the dose of a carcinogen delivered to target cells is proportional to the dose administered to test animals, even at exposure levels below the experimental range. Since pharmacokinetic data are becoming available that in some cases question the validity of this assumption, risk assessors must decide whether to maintain the standard assumption. A pilot study of formaldehyde is reported that was undertaken to demonstrate how expert scientific judgment can help guide a controversial risk assessment where pharmacokinetic data are considered inconclusive. Eight experts on pharmacokinetic data were selected by a formal procedure, and each was interviewed personally using a structured interview protocol. The results suggest that expert scientific opinion is polarized in this case, a situation that risk assessors can respond to with a range of risk characterizations considered biologically plausible by the experts. Convergence of expert opinion is likely in this case of several specific research strategies ar executed in a competent fashion. Elicitation of expert scientific judgment is a promising vehicle for evaluating the quality of pharmacokinetic data, expressing uncertainty in risk assessment, and fashioning a research agenda that offers possible forging of scientific consensus.     

Tissue Dosimetry, Pharmacokinetic Modeling, and Interspecies Scaling Factors

Interspecies scaling factors (ISFs) are numbers used to adjust the potency factor (for example, the q1* for carcinogens or reference doses for compounds eliciting other toxic endpoints) determined in experimental animals to account for expected differences in potency between test animals and people. ISFs have been developed for both cancer and non-cancer risk assessments in response to a common issue: toxicologists often determine adverse effects of chemicals in test animals and then they, or more commonly risk assessors and risk managers, have to draw inferences about what these observations mean for the human population. This perspective briefly reviews the development of ISFs and their applications in health risk assessments over the past 20 years, examining the impact of pharmacokinetic principles in altering current perceptions of the ISFs applied in these health risk assessments, and assessing future directions in applying both pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic principles for developing ISFs.     

Bayesian penalized smoothing approaches in models specified using differential equations with unknown error distributions

A full Bayesian approach based on ordinary differential equation (ODE)-penalized B-splines and penalized Gaussian mixture is proposed to jointly estimate ODE-parameters, state function and error distribution from the observation of some state functions involved in systems of affine differential equations. Simulations inspired by pharmacokinetic (PK) studies show that the proposed method provides comparable results to the method based on the standard ODE-penalized B-spline approach (i.e. with the Gaussian error distribution assumption) and outperforms the standard ODE-penalized B-splines when the distribution is not Gaussian. This methodology is illustrated on a PK data set.     

Sample‐size calculations for multi‐group comparison in population pharmacokinetic experiments

This paper describes an approach for calculating sample size for population pharmacokinetic experiments that involve hypothesis testing based on multi‐group comparison detecting the difference in parameters between groups under mixed‐effects modelling. This approach extends what has been described for generalized linear models and nonlinear population pharmacokinetic models that involve only binary covariates to more complex nonlinear population pharmacokinetic models. The structural nonlinear model is linearized around the random effects to obtain the marginal model and the hypothesis testing involving model parameters is based on Wald's test. This approach provides an efficient and fast method for calculating sample size for hypothesis testing in population pharmacokinetic models. The approach can also handle different design problems such as unequal allocation of subjects to groups and unbalanced sampling times between and within groups. The results obtained following application to a one compartment intravenous bolus dose model that involved three different hypotheses under different scenarios showed good agreement between the power obtained from NONMEM simulations and nominal power. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.