Human eyes and skin are frequently exposed to chemicals accidentally or on purpose due to their external location. Therefore, chemicals are required to undergo the evaluation of the ocular and dermal irritancy for their safe handling and use before release into the market. Draize rabbit eye and skin irritation test developed in 1944, has been a gold standard test which was enlisted as OECD TG 404 and OECD TG 405 but it has been criticized with respect to animal welfare due to invasive and cruel procedure. To replace it, diverse alternatives have been developed: (i) For Draize eye irritation test, organotypic assay, in vitro cytotoxicity-based method, in chemico tests, in silico prediction model, and 3D reconstructed human cornea-like epithelium (RhCE); (ii) For Draize skin irritation test, in vitro cytotoxicity-based cell model, and 3D reconstructed human epidermis models (RhE). Of these, RhCE and RhE models are getting spotlight as a promising alternative with a wide applicability domain covering cosmetics and personal care products. In this review, we overviewed the current alternatives to Draize test with a focus on 3D human epithelium models to provide an insight into advancing and widening their utility.

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ObjectiveTo compare the clinical severity of congenital muscular torticollis (CMT) based on the method of child birth.MethodChildren diagnosed with CMT and who were < 6-years-of-age at the time of their first visit at the Center for Torticollis, Ajou Medical Center, were included in this study. The medical records were retrospectively reviewed with reference to the method of child birth and the clinical severity of CMT. The clinical severity of CMT was determined either by whether stretching exercises were needed for the children <6-month-of-age or whether surgical release was required for the children ≥6-months-of-age at the time of the first visit.ResultsOne hundred seventy eight subjects with CMT were enrolled. There was no significant difference in the rate of surgical release according to the method of child birth. For 132 patients <6-month-of-age there was also no significant difference in the rate of stretching exercises.ConclusionThere was no significant difference in the clinical severity of CMT based on the method of child birth. This finding suggests that prenatal factors alone could be a cause of CMT and that the clinical severity of CMT in children delivered by Cesarean section is not different when compared with the severity of CMT in children born through vaginal delivery.

Objective (1) To present the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings of congenital muscular torticollis (CMT) of subjects who underwent surgical release and subjects who showed a good prognosis with stretching exercises and (2) to correlate the MRI findings with the histopathologic findings of CMT for subjects who underwent surgical release in order to examine the hypothesis that the MRI findings of CMT can be used as a determinant to perform surgical release of CMT. Method The neck MRI findings of 33 subjects who underwent surgical release for CMT were compared with those of 18 subjects who were successfully managed only with conservative management. The MRI findings were correlated with the histopathologic sections of the CMT mass. Results All 33 subjects (100%) who underwent surgical release showed one or more low signal intensities within the involved sternocleidomastoid muscle (SCM) on the T1- and T2-weighted images of neck MRI. The eighteen non-surgical candidates showed only enlargement of the SCM without low signal intensity within the SCM. The histopathologic findings showed interstitial fibrosis and/or the presence of aberrant tendon-like excessive dense connective tissue that was either well-arranged or disorganized. Conclusion The histopathologic findings and MRI findings showed good correlation in terms of the amount of fibrosis and aberrant dense connective tissue within the SCM. If multiple or large low signal intensities within the SCM are noted, we think that surgical release should be considered.