Journal of Pharmacological Reports
Open Access

Scientific study of adverse effect of drugs on living organisms

Mohammad Adam^{* *}Correspondence: Mohammad Adam, Department of Pharmacology and toxicology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Ethiopia, Email:

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The discipline of evidence-based toxicology strives to transparently, consistently, and objectively assess available scientific evidence so as to answer questions in toxicology the study of the adverse effects of chemical, physical, or biological agents on living organisms and therefore the environment, including the prevention and amelioration of such effects. Evidence-based toxicology has the potential to deal with concerns within the toxicological community about the restrictions of current approaches to assessing the state of the science. These include concerns associated with transparency in deciding, synthesis of various sorts of evidence, and therefore the assessment of bias and credibility. Evidence-based toxicology has its roots within the larger movement towards evidence-based practices. Testing methods Toxicity experiments could also be conducted in vivo (using the entire animal) or in vitro (testing on isolated cells or tissues), or in silico (in a computer simulation). Nonhuman animals The classic experimental tool of toxicology is testing on nonhuman animals .Example of model organisms are bee moth, which may replace small mammals, and Zebrafish, which permit for the study of toxicology during a lower order vertebrate in vivo As of 2014, such animal testing provides information that's not available by other means about how substances function during a living organism. The use of non-human animals for toxicology testing is opposed by some organizations for reasons of animal welfare, and it's been restricted or banned under some circumstances in certain regions, like the testing of cosmetics within the European Union. Alternative testing methods While testing in animal models remains as a way of estimating in 2007 the American NGO National Academy of Sciences published a report called "Toxicity Testing within the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy" which opened with a statement: "Change often involves a pivotal event that builds on previous history and opens the door to a replacement era. Pivotal events in science include the invention of penicillin, the elucidation of the DNA helix, and therefore the development of computers. ...Toxicity testing is approaching such a scientific pivot point. It’s poised to need advantage of the revolutions in biology and biotechnology. Advances in toxic genomics, bioinformatics, systems biology, epigenetics, and computational toxicology could transform toxicity testing from a system supported whole-animal testing to at least one founded totally on in vitro methods that evaluate changes in biologic processes using cells, cell lines, or cellular components, preferably of human origin. As of 2014 that vision was still unrealized.