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Related Experiment Videos

Hormesis: a generalizable and unifying hypothesis.

E J Calabrese1, L A Baldwin

  • 1Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health and Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 01003, USA. edwardc@schoolph.umass.edu

Critical Reviews in Toxicology
|August 16, 2001
PubMed
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Hormesis, a beneficial biological response to low doses of toxins, is a highly generalizable phenomenon across diverse organisms and stressors. This study confirms hormesis as a fundamental adaptive mechanism with broad biological and clinical implications.

Area of Science:

  • Biology
  • Toxicology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Pharmacology

Background:

  • Hormesis is a dose-response phenomenon where a beneficial effect occurs at low doses and a toxic effect at higher doses.
  • The generalizability of hormesis across different biological systems and environmental stressors has been a subject of ongoing scientific inquiry.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To comprehensively assess the hypothesis that hormesis is a highly generalizable biological phenomenon.
  • To determine if hormesis is independent of the environmental stressor, biological endpoint, and experimental model system.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a multi-pronged approach including evolutionary biology paradigms, meta-analysis of over 20,000 toxicology articles, and evaluation of large-scale studies.
  • Incorporated pharmacological data on 24 receptor systems with established biphasic dose responses and mechanistic elucidation.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Assessed a database of 1600 dose-response relationships consistent with the hormesis hypothesis.

    • Main Results:

    • Complementary approaches provided strong support for hormesis as a credible and central biological theory.
    • Hormesis was observed with high frequency and quantitative features across microbial, plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate systems.
    • Mechanisms underlying hormetic effects are clarified for over two dozen receptor systems.

    Conclusions:

    • Hormetic effects represent evolutionary-based adaptive responses to environmental disruptions in homeostasis.
    • Findings provide a basis for applying hormetic mechanisms to understand fundamental biological processes.
    • Hormesis offers potential for developing novel clinical modalities.