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 extent and origin of intra-individual variability in toxicity studies, incorporation of genotypic information to address intra-individual variability, optimal design of experiments, and extension of toxicokinetic modelling to the analysis of biomarker studies in industrial hygiene or epidemiological contexts. Bayesian statistics provide powerful numerical methods for fitting population models, particularly when complex mechanistic toxicokinetic or toxicodynamic models are involved. Challenges and limitations to the use of population models, in terms of basic structure, computational burden, ease of implementation and data accessibility, are identified and discussed