title: On the correlation coefficient between the TD50 and the MTD.
abstract: The existence of correlation between the carcinogenic potency and the maximum tolerated dose has been the subject of many investigations in recent years. Several attempts have been made to quantify this correlation in different bioassay experiments. By using some distributional assumptions, Krewski et al. derive an analytic expression for the coefficient of correlation between the carcinogenic potency TD50 and the maximum tolerated dose. Here, we discuss the deviation that may result in using their analytical expression. By taking a more general approach we derive an expression for the correlation coefficient which includes the result of Krewski et al. as a special case, and show that their expression may overestimate the correlation in some instances and yet underestimate the correlation in other instances. The proposed method is illustrated by application to a real dataset.
authors.affiliation: National Center for Toxicological Research, Bloomsburg University, Pennsylvania 17815, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Razzaghi
authors.forename: D W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Gaylor
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015197:Carcinogenicity Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002273:Carcinogens / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000633:toxicity*; D004361:Drug Tolerance; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D018570:Risk Assessment
chemical_list: D002273:Carcinogens