Interlaboratory Comparison of Motor Activity Experiments: Implications forNeurotoxicological Assessments

摘要

Due to the increasing use of motor activity in neurotoxicology, a major questionconcerns the potential for differences in experimental findings due to variations in sensitivity and reliability between different laboratories and devices used to measure motor activity. The study addressed the question by examining historical data from a number of laboratories that employed different devices and experimental protocols to measure motor activity. Four aspects of the motor activity data were compared: (1) within laboratory control variability; (2) within laboratory replicability of control data; (3) between laboratory variability in the effects of chemicals; and (4) between laboratory comparison of the control rates of habituation. The analyses indicated that there was a relatively restricted range of within-laboratory variability and reliability in control values, and that these ranges were comparable across laboratories. Similar profiles of habituation were also seen across the different laboratories. Moreover, in virtually every case all laboratories were capable of detecting qualitatively similar changes in motor activity following acute exposure to a variety of chemicals. These data indicate a high degree of comparability in the data generated by the different devices and experimental protocols.