Fish Short-Term Reproduction Assay

The Fish Short-Term Reproduction Assay serves as an in vitro screening assay to help identify chemicals or mixtures that have the potential to interact with the endocrine system. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA 2002) has described a short-term reproduction assay with the fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) that considers reproductive fitness as an integrated measure of toxicant effects, and also enables measurement of a suite of histological and biochemical endpoints that reflect effects associated with disturbance to the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) endocrine axis.

This assay is part of the OECD framework for the Testing and Assessment of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals” under the EPA.