Associating Changes in the Immune System with Clinical Diseases for Interpretation in Risk Assessment

This overview is an update of the unit originally published in 2004. While the basic tenets of immunotoxicity have not changed in the past 10 years, several publications have explored the application of immunotoxicological data to the risk assessment process. Therefore, the goal of this unit is still to highlight relationships between xenobiotic-induced immunosuppression and risk of clinical diseases progression. In immunotoxicology, this may require development of models to equate moderate changes in markers of immune functions to potential changes in incidence or severity of infectious diseases. For most xenobiotics, exposure levels and disease incidence data are rarely available, and safe exposure levels must be estimated based on observations from experimental models or human biomarker studies. Thus, it is important to establish a scientifically sound framework that allows accurate and quantitative interpretation of experimental or biomarker data in the risk assessment process.