Applications of population approaches in toxicology

Many experimental or observational studies in toxicology are best analysed in a population framework. Recent examples include investigations of the ex tent and origin of intra-individual variability in toxicity studies, incorp oration of genotypic information to address intra-individual variability, o ptimal design of experiments, and extension of toxicokinetic modelling to t he analysis of biomarker studies. Bayesian statistics provide powerful nume rical methods for fitting population models, particularly when complex mech anistic models are involved. Challenges and limitations to the use of popul ation models, in terms of basic structure, computational burden, ease of im plementation and data accessibility, are identified and discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.