Abstract
Hormesis has been widely observed and debated in a variety of context in biomedicine and toxicological sciences. Detecting its presence can be an important problem with wide ranging implications. However, there is little work on constructing an efficient experiment to detect its existence or estimate the threshold dose. We use optimal design theory to develop a variety of locally optimal designs to detect hormesis, estimate the threshold dose and the zero-equivalent point (ZEP) for commonly used models in toxicology and risk assessment. To facilitate use of more efficient designs to detect hormesis, estimate threshold dose and estimate the ZEP in practice, we implement computer algorithms and create a user-friendly web site to help the biomedical researcher generate different types of optimal designs. The online tool facilitates the user to evaluate robustness properties of a selected design to various model assumptions and compare designs before implementation.
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Acknowledgements
Casero-Alonso and Wong are partially sponsored by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain) and funds FEDER (EU), Grant MTM2016-80539-C2-1-R. Casero-Alonso is also supported by the Grant GI20174047 from UCLM. Pepelyshev is partially supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Project 17-01-00161-a. Wong is also partially supported by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (USA) under Award Number R01GM107639. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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Casero-Alonso, V., Pepelyshev, A. & Wong, W.K. A web-based tool for designing experimental studies to detect hormesis and estimate the threshold dose. Stat Papers 59, 1307–1324 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00362-018-1038-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00362-018-1038-5