AJP - Endocrinology and Metabolism, Vol 252, Issue 3 E357-E364, Copyright © 1987 by American Physiological Society
A model-free approach to estimation of relative potency in dose-response curve analysis
V. Guardabasso, D. Rodbard and P. J. Munson
We have developed a new, general approach to analysis of dose-response
curves from bioassay, immunoassay (including radioimmunoassay,
immunoradiouretic assay, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), and other
experimental procedures. It provides a test for parallelism, similarity of
shape, and a measure of relative potency for any set of two or more curves.
The method uses a constrained smoothing spline function to estimate the
curve shape, together with a nonlinear least-squares fitting technique to
estimate parameters for relative potency and slope. The use of "constrained
splines" permits the analysis of nonlinear dose-response curves that cannot
be described by a simple model or equation such as the symmetric
four-parameter logistic. A microcomputer program is used for the analysis,
providing relative potencies and their SE and evaluation of goodness of
fit.
