Historical control data of rare events: issues, chronological patterns and their relevance for toxicological evaluations

Historical control data (HCD) give context for a measurement by providing a biological reference frame. HCD are used in the evaluation of toxicological bioassays for quality and performance control, informal statistical false discovery rate mitigation, and to estimate the biological relevance of observed potentially adverse findings. The current commentary shortly highlights 5 points that should be considered when working with HCD of rare events: 1) HCD database (HCDB) size, 2) the issue of rare events, 3) potential chronological patterns, 4) using point estimates to summarize HCD and 5) independence from treatment bias, i.e., HCD are mostly informative for primary toxicity. It is argued to use exploratory data analysis and to apply ad hoc time windows for assessment based on an HCDB that is as large as possible to monitor for potential structure and systemic bias in the data.