Trombini, C. (2019). Evaluación de la contaminación por compuestos farmacéuticos en organismos modelo (Tisbe battagliai, Procambarus clarkii, Ruditapes philippinarum y Scrobicularia plana). Una aproximación ecotoxicológica. [Assessment of contamination by pharmaceutical compounds in model organisms (Tisbe battagliai, Procambarus clarkii, Ruditapes philippinarum and Scrobicularia plana). An ecotoxicological approach.]. Doctoral Thesis, Universidad de Cádiz, Cadiz, Spain. [In Spanish].
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Trombini, C.
2019
Evaluaci�n de la contaminaci�n por compuestos farmac�uticos en organismos modelo (Tisbe battagliai, Procambarus clarkii, Ruditapes philippinarum y Scrobicularia plana). Una aproximaci�n ecotoxicol�gica. [Assessment of contamination by pharmaceutical compounds in model organisms (Tisbe battagliai, Procambarus clarkii, Ruditapes philippinarum and Scrobicularia plana). An ecotoxicological approach.]
Doctoral Thesis, Universidad de Cádiz, Cadiz, Spain.
[In Spanish]
Publication
The current development and consumption habits have given rise to the generation of a great variety of polluting substances that are continuously poured into the different compartments of the environment. Currently, the so-called "emerging" pollutants have acquired great importance. Emerging pollutants are compounds of different origin and chemical nature, whose presence in the environment has gone unnoticed for a long time. In addition, these are substances, in most cases not regulated, for which information regarding their presence and possible impact on the environment is very scarce. Among the different emerging pollutants, pharmaceutical compounds are of particular concern due to their continuous introduction and persistence in the different environmental compartments and, above all, due to their high reactivity which makes them capable of reacting with biological systems even if they are present in very low doses. Water bodies are the main receivers of these pollutants in those that are found in concentrations in the ng-µg L-1 range and those that arrive mainly through waste water treatment plants due to the ineffectiveness of conventional treatment processes in the elimination of drugs). Once in the aquatic environment, these compounds can produce harmful effects on resident organisms that, today, despite the increasing efforts made by the scientific community to investigate them, remain poorly known. This is mainly due to the great diversity of existing compounds, exposed species and environmental conditions that modify the behavior and bioavailability of drugs in the aquatic environment. Hence the need to continue studying these effects and the importance, in this context, of ecotoxicological exposure tests to evaluate the risk associated with the presence of drugs in the aquatic environment and to clarify the mechanisms of action of these on non-target organisms. For decades, aquatic invertebrates (bivalve molluscs and crustaceans) have been the most used in pollutant toxicity studies due to their ecological and economic relevance, their sensitivity and their biological characteristics that facilitate their collection, maintenance and manipulation in laboratory conditions. Aquatic toxicity tests can have two different approaches: on the one hand, a more classic approach focused on the evaluation of acute lethal responses (survival) and, on the other, an approach focused on chronic responses to sublethal concentrations that, despite not yet being integrated into environmental risk assessment processes, is widely used in ecotoxicological studies both in the field and in the laboratory. This second approach includes the study of biomarkers, biochemical, molecular and cellular responses that measure the toxic effect produced by pollutants on organisms and that can help diagnose the impact and risk that these substances can produce at higher levels of biological organization.
This Doctoral Thesis aims to study the acute and chronic effects of different drugs, chosen among the most commonly detected in aquatic systems, individually or in mixtures on aquatic invertebrates. The first part of this Report (Chapter 1) focuses on the evaluation of the acute toxicity of acetaminophen, carbamazepine, diclofenac and ibuprofen both individually and in mixtures on the harpacticoid copepod Tisbe battagliai. The results obtained will be used to determine the environmental risk associated with the presence of these drugs in the aquatic environment. In the case of the mixtures, the toxicity data obtained experimentally were compared with theoretical data calculated by means of toxicity prediction models to evaluate the effectiveness of these predictions. The second part of the Report focused on knowing the effects of environmentally relevant concentrations (or close to them) of different pharmaceutical compounds in the bivalve molluscs Ruditapes philippinarum (Chapter 2) and Scrobicularia plana (Chapter 4) and in the river crab Procambarus clarkii (Chapter 3). For this, biochemical and molecular biomarkers associated with the processes of oxidative stress and detoxification (superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, glutathione reductase, glutathione transferase, lipid peroxidation, metallothioneins and acetylcholinesterase) were measured in two target tissues: the digestive gland (hepatopancreas in the case of P. clarkii) organ in which the pollutants ingested through accumulate and/or metabolize of food, and the gills in charge of respiration and filtration. Additionally, the effects of exposure to drugs on the expression of selected genes in the hepatopancreas of P. clarkii and the levels of drugs accumulated both in this organ and in the digestive gland of S. plana were studied.
