Organ weights toxicity assessments

Acute oral toxicity studies do not contribute to the assessment of reproductive toxicity as they lack organ weight measurements and histopathology. In a way this is unfortunate because the study design itself, a single high dose followed by a 2-week observation period, might be suited for early detection and preliminary characterization of testicular toxicants. 

Typically, selection of the major test end-point to be used in the investigation is based on the compliance needs or the objective of the investigation. For acute exposures, survival is often the end-point selected for performance of the toxicity assessment. Although chronic exposures often use survival, growth expressed as dry weight, or some measure of reproductive potential (i.e. fecundity, offspring production) is the major test end-point. Survival of the test organisms (expressed... 

---