TESTING THE NEURAL SENSITIZATION AND KINDLING HYPOTHESIS FOR ILLNESS FROM LOW-LEVELS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMICALS

Sensitization in the neuroscience and pharmacology literatures is defi ned as progressive increase in the size of a response over repeated pr esentations of a stimulus. Types of sensitization include stimulant dr ug-induced time-dependent sensitization (TDS), an animal model related to substance abuse, and limbic kindling, an animal model for temporal lobe epilepsy, Neural sensitization (primarily nonconvulsive or subco nvulsive) to the adverse properties of substances has been hypothesize d to underlie the initiation and subsequent elicitation of heightened sensitivity to low levels of environmental chemicals. A corollary of t he sensitization model is that individuals with illness from low-level chemicals are among the more sensitizable members of the population. The Working Group on Sensitization and Kindling identified two primary goals for a research approach to this problem: to perform controlled experiments to determine whether or not sensitization to low-level che mical exposures occurs in multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) patients ; and to use animal preparations for kindling and TDS as nonhomologous models for the initiation and elicitation of MCS.