Evaluation of the EYTEX system as a screen for eye irritancy of petroleum products
T A Roy1, K A Saladdin, C R Mackerer
1Environmental and Health Sciences Laboratory, Mobil Oil Corporation, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
Abstract:
89 petroleum products were tested in the EYTEX in vitro assay and the results were compared with data from Draize tests on the same materials. All 26 chemicals assessed as irritant in the Draize test were classified as irritant by the EYTEX assay; 61 of the 63 non-irritants were correctly classified by the in vitro assay. The correlation between the results from the EYTEX system and the Draize data was 89%, and the predictive value of the EYTEX system (percentage of EYTEX irritants that are true irritants) was 93%. When the same chemicals were tested in another laboratory, the coefficient of determination for the comparison of the EYTEX scores from the two laboratories was R(2) = 0.86. The results demonstrate the reliability and interpretability of the EYTEX assay carried out in our laboratory and therefore the viability, if not the validity, of this in vitro method as a screening test for the Draize assay.
