UCLA

Hormesis has been widely observed and debated in a variety of context in biomedicineand toxicological sciences. Detecting its presence can be an important problem withwide ranging implications. However, there is little work on constructing an efficientexperiment to detect its existence or estimate the threshold dose.We use optimal designtheory to develop a variety of locally optimal designs to detect hormesis, estimatethe threshold dose and the zero-equivalent point (ZEP) for commonly used modelsin toxicology and risk assessment. To facilitate use of more efficient designs todetect hormesis, estimate threshold dose and estimate the ZEP in practice, we implementcomputer algorithms and create a user-friendly web site to help the biomedicalresearcher generate different types of optimal designs. The online tool facilitates theuser to evaluate robustness properties of a selected design to various model assumptionsand compare designs before implementation.