Factors affecting chemical toxicity

The exposure to poisons may elicit different outcomes according to a number of individual and non-individual factors. In most cases the variation in the toxic response is based on the different expression of enzymes or proteins involved in the kinetics of poisons, which may vary according to diet, species, breed, and physiopathological factors, or the previous or concomitant exposure to several foreign compounds While until a recent past such events could hardly be explained, in recent years the unprecedented development of molecular techniques has made it possible to gain insight into many of the mechanisms underlying most of the differences in the response to foreign compounds.