[Predictive experimental animal test of contact allergenicity. Relevance of the methods of the OECD and EEC guidelines. The organization for Economic Co-operation and Development].

In the first part of this article a historical note is given on the development of predictive contact allergenicity tests in guinea pigs starting with the Draize test, including epidermal methods and at least induction procedures using Freund complete adjuvant as a nonspecific enhancer of immunoreactivity. The tests of the OECD and EEC guidelines are listed and classified according to their predictive sensitivity. It is recommended to test reference allergens by different test methods in one's own laboratory to obtain personal experience with the various methods. Comparisons of the different methods based only on the literature are difficult, because there are so many influences on the performance of sensitization tests and because one is often not sure how the animals were termed positive, i.e. the threshold of a positive erythema score is often not clearly defined. Correlations between test results obtained in guinea pigs and man are presented for the Draize test, the maximization and the optimization test. It is emphasized that guinea pig tests are performed to assess the contact allergenic potential of a compound or formulation, but that the risk assessment is dependent on many other factors and should, therefore, be evaluated separately.