Environmental Health Perspectives 105, Supplement 2, March 1997

Experimental Strategies for Research on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

Bernard Weiss

University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York

Abstract
Skepticism about the validity of the multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) syndrome stems in part from the lack of supporting experimental data. Performing the relevant experiments requires investigators to take account of broad variations in sensitivity and the need to establish reproducibility. The research approach best suited for MCS studies is the single-subject design. In contrast with conventional group designs, such designs emphasize repeated observations on individual subjects. Repeated observations of this kind constitute a time series in which successive measurements are serially or autocorrelated. One statistical method that bypasses the serial correlation problem is randomization tests. Explicit time series analyses take account of this aspect and can correct for it to determine the impact of an intervention such as a chemical exposure. -- Environ Health Perspect 105(Suppl 2):487-494 (1997)

Key words: multiple chemical sensitivity, randomization tests, time series analysis, single-subject designs

This paper is based on a presentation at the Conference on Experimental Approaches to Chemical Sensitivity held 20-22 September 1995 in Princeton, New Jersey. Manuscript received at EHP 6 March 1996; manuscript accepted 13 November 1996.
Preparation of this paper was supported in part by grant ES01247 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Address correspondence to Dr. B. Weiss, Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY 14642. Telephone: (716) 275-1736. Fax: (716) 256-2591. E-mail: weiss@envmed.rochester.edu
Abbreviations used: ADD, attention deficit disorder; AMA, American Medical Association; ARIMA, autoregressive integrated moving average; MCS, multiple chemical sensitivity; SD, standard deviation.

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Last Update: March 24, 1997