Medical aromatherapy revisited-Basic mechanisms, critique, and a new development.

Objective: According to a series of recent meta-analyses and systematic reviews, aromatherapy has shown to be effective in treating patients with different medical conditions. However, many of the clinical studies are of rather low methodological quality. Moreover, there is much conceptual ambiguity with regard to what aromatherapy actually constitutes.

International Harmonization and Cooperation in the Validation of Alternative Methods.

The development and validation of scientific alternatives to animal testing is important not only from an ethical perspective (implementation of 3Rs), but also to improve safety assessment decision making with the use of mechanistic information of higher relevance to humans. To be effective in these efforts, it is however imperative that validation centres, industry, regulatory bodies, academia and other interested parties ensure a strong international cooperation, cross-sector collaboration and intense communication in the design, execution, and peer review of validation studies. Such an approach is critical to achieve harmonized and more transparent approaches to method validation, peer-review and recommendation, which will ultimately expedite the international acceptance of valid alternative methods or strategies by regulatory authorities and their implementation and use by stakeholders.

Genotoxicity of nanomaterials: refining strategies and tests for hazard identification.

A workshop addressing strategies for the genotoxicity assessment of nanomaterials (NMs) was held on October 23, 2010 in Fort Worth Texas, USA. The workshop was organized by the Environmental Mutagen Society and the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) Health and Environmental Sciences Institute. The workshop was attended by more than 80 participants from academia, regulatory agencies, and industry from North America, Europe and Japan.

Follow-up testing of rodent carcinogens not positive in the standard genotoxicity testing battery: IWGT workgroup report.

At the Plymouth Third International Workshop on Genotoxicity Testing in June 2002, a new expert group started a working process to provide guidance on a common strategy for genotoxicity testing beyond the current standard battery. The group identified amongst others "Follow-up testing of tumorigenic agents not positive in the standard genotoxicity test battery" as one subject for further consideration [L. Müller, D.