Testing and refining the Science in Risk Assessment and Policy (SciRAP) web‐based platform for evaluating the reliability and relevance of in vivo toxicity studies

Abstract

The Science in Risk Assessment and Policy (SciRAP) web-based platform was developed to promote and facilitate structure and transparency in the evaluation of ecotoxicity and toxicity studies for hazard and risk assessment of chemicals. The platform includes sets of criteria and a colour-coding tool for evaluating the reliability and relevance of individual studies. The SciRAP method for evaluating in vivo toxicity studies was first published in 2014 and the aim of the work presented here was to evaluate and develop that method further. Toxicologists and risk assessors from different sectors and geographical areas were invited to test the SciRAP criteria and tool on a specific set of in vivo toxicity studies and to provide feedback concerning the scientific soundness and user-friendliness of the SciRAP approach. The results of this expert assessment were used to refine and improve both the evaluation criteria and the colour-coding tool. It is expected that the SciRAP web-based platform will continue to be developed and enhanced to keep up to date with the needs of end-users.

MTT versus other cell viability assays to evaluate the biocompatibility of root canal filling materials: a systematic review

“…In this context, Schneider et al (2009) provided means to assess study harmonization and reliability through the software-based ToxRTool, according to five criteria: (i) test substance identification, (ii) test system characterization, (iii) study design description, (iv) results documentation and (v) plausibility of the study design and results. A more recent framework (Science in Risk Assessment and Policy -SciRAP) allows the evaluation of risk of bias through criteria based on international guidelines (Beronius et al 2018), which complementary evaluate the existence of conflicts of interest and relevance of the choice of test system. Together, these tools have shown a good level of methodological harmonization in the conduct and reporting of cytotoxicity assessments of RCFMs.…”

“…In this sense, the present systematic review only included such studies. The included articles were further evaluated for risk of bias with the SciRAP (Science in Risk Assessment and Policy) web-based reporting and evaluation resource, available at www.scirap.org (Beronius et al 2018). This tool provides three checklists for reporting quality, methodological quality and relevance of the study, producing scores on a 0-100 scale.…”

Improving structure and transparency in reliability evaluations of data under REACH: suggestions for a systematic method

“…The numbers in bold indicate the number of included studies in each category (in total 20). methodological quality (SciRAP 2017a; Beronius et al 2018). The criteria cover aspects regarding the test compound and controls, animal model and housing conditions, dosing and administration of the test compound as well as data collection and analysis.…”

“…For example, the criterion "The allocation of animals to different tests and measurements was randomized" was removed for studies where the animals have been subjected to the same tests and measurements. The evaluation was conducted using the online tool on the website (Figure 2) and the evaluation result was exported to an Excel file (Beronius et al 2018).…”

“…Moreover, when participants did use the key criteria, they applied them very strictly despite explaining there could be potential exceptions (Moermond et al 2016). Also, more experienced risk assessors seem to be more lenient in their evaluations compared to less experienced participants who were more strict, as seen in workshops where participants from different sectors and with different levels of experience have evaluated the same studies (Ingre-Khans et al 2018;Beronius et al 2018).…”