The impact of pharmaceutical pollutants on daphnids - A metabolomic approach.

Pharmaceuticals have been classified as emerging contaminants in the aquatic ecosystem, mainly due to their increased use and improper disposal. A significant range of pharmaceutical compounds and their metabolites have been globally detected in surface waters and pose detrimental effects to non-target organisms. Monitoring pharmaceutical water pollution relies on the analytical approaches for their detection, however, such approaches are limited by their sensitivity limit and coverage of the wide range pharmaceutical compounds. This lack of realism in risk assessment is bypassed with effect-based methods, which are complemented by chemical screening and impact modelling, and are able to provide mechanistic insight for pollution. Focusing on the freshwater ecosystem, in this study we evaluated the acute effects on daphnids for three distinct groups of pharmaceuticals; antibiotics, estrogens, and a range of commonly encountered environmentally relevant pharmaceutical pollutants. Combining several endpoints such as mortality, biochemical (enzyme activities) and holistic (metabolomics) we discovered distinct patterns in biological responses. In this study, changes in enzymes of metabolism e.g. phosphatases and lipase, as well as the detoxification enzyme, glutathione-S-transferase, were recorded following acute exposure to the selected pharmaceuticals. A targeted analysis of the hydrophilic profile of daphnids revealed mainly the up-regulation of metabolites following metformin, gabapentin, amoxicillin, trimethoprim and β-estradiol. Whereas gemfibrozil, sulfamethoxazole and oestrone exposure resulted in the down-regulation of majority of metabolites.

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Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Katie O’Rourke reports financial support was provided by Irish Research Council and the Orla Benson Family for the Orla Benson Memorial Scholarship. Konstantinos Grintzalis reports financial support was provided by Science Foundation Ireland. Konstantinos Grintzalis reports financial support was provided by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Georgios Theodoridis reports equipment, drugs, or supplies was provided by FoodOmicsGR, Research Infrastructure of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (MIS 5029057).