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Show 80 Elizabeth Young college of science Too often, prescription medications thought to be safe for human use are found to cause unacceptable health consequences fail during clinical testing or are recalled after public release. Two examples include Cerivastatin (Baycol) and Rofecoxib (Vioxx) - once thought to be the ‘Holy Grail' of pharmaceuticals. Some pharmaceuticals in the market are suspected of causing adverse health consequences and require addi-tional research, one example being Paroxetine (Paxil). One major problem is the inability of current toxicity assessment methods to detect most toxicities in pharmaceuticals prior to clinical trials. We have devel-oped an alternative research method known as the organismal performance assay (OPA). OPA's are broad, sensitive and functional assays of fitness which utilize wild outbred mice (Mus musculus) in semi-natural enclosures where they compete for territories, food and mates. To succeed in this type of environment, high performance and fitness is required from most physiological systems. We assessed the fitness of animals exposed to either Rofecoxib or Paroxetine when competing against control mice. Fitness is analyzed through territoriality, survivorship and reproductive success of these ongoing studies. We hypothesize that pharmaceutical-exposed individuals - such as Paroxetine-exposed mice - will suffer significant fitness declines when compared with control animals. The Paroxetine-exposed males are significantly less dominant in both reproductive success and territoriality (p<0.0001), Paroxetine-exposed females have significantly reduced reproductive success (p=0.0135), as well as a significant sex bias in Paxil litters favoring female to male pups. Paroxetine populations show decreased fitness support-ing our hypothesis of certain pharmaceuticals to cause adverse health effects as observed in this alterna-tive assay. These OPA observations are sensitive enough to detect adverse effects not detected by previ-ous studies, and is potentially a useful tool in safety testing during pharmaceutical development. This can reduce the unfortunate situation of risking our well-being due to current inadequate toxicity assessments. A NOVEL RESEARCH METHOD TO DETERMINE ADVERSE EFFECTS OF PHARMACEUTICALS ON GENETICALLY DIVERSE MICE Elizabeth Young (Wayne Potts, Shannon Gaukler) Department of Biology University of Utah UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ABSTRACTS Wayne Potts Shannon Gaukler |