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LaRonda L. Morford,¹ Judith W. Henck,¹ William J. Breslin,¹ and John M. DeSesso²

¹Eli Lilly and Company, Greenfield, Indiana, USA; ²Mitretek Systems, Falls Church, Virginia, USA

Abstract
Children differ from adults both physiologically and behaviorally. These differences can affect how and when exposures to xenobiotics occur and the resulting responses. Testing using animal models may be used to predict whether children display novel toxicities not observed in adults or whether children are more or less sensitive to known toxicities. Historically, evaluation of developmental toxicity has focused on gestational exposures and morphological changes resulting from this exposure. Functional consequences of gestational exposure and postnatal exposure have not been as well studied. Difficulties with postnatal toxicity evaluations include divergent differentiation of structure, function and physiology across species, lack of understanding of species differences in functional ontogeny, and lack of common end points and milestones across species. Key words: critical periods of development, extrapolation of animal data, hazard identification, regulatory guidelines. Environ Health Perspect 112:266-271 (2004) . doi:10.1289/ehp.6014 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 25 November 2003]

This article is part of the mini-monograph "Assessing Risks in Children from Exposure to Environmental Agents."

Address correspondence to L.L. Morford, Lilly Research Laboratories, PO Box 708, Greenfield, IN 46140 USA. Telephone: (317) 433-1780. Fax: (317) 651-6147. E-mail: lmorford@lilly.com

The authors declare they have no competing financial interests.

Received 23 September 2002 ; accepted 24 November 2003.