Hormesis: its impact on medicine and health.
This article offers a broad assessment of the hormetic dose response and its relevance to biomedical researchers, physicians, the pharmaceutical industry, and public health scientists. This article contains a series of 61 questions followed by relatively brief but referenced responses that provides support for the conclusion that hormesis is a reproducible phenomenon, commonly observed, with a frequency far greater than other dose-response models such as the threshold and linear nonthreshold dose-response models. The article provides a detailed background information on the historical foundations of hormesis, its quantitative features, mechanistic foundations, as well as how hormesis is currently being used within medicine and identifying how this concept could be further applied in the development of new therapeutic advances and in improved public health practices.
Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA. edwardc@schoolph.umass.edu
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D000818:Animals; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D055808:Drug Discovery; D006262:Health; D059165:Hormesis; D006801:Humans; D008511:Medicine