<p>Rapid emergence and spread of current pandemic of COVID-19 has evoked the medical science community to investigate quick, accurate and reliable diagnostic and prognostic approaches. Early identification of causative agent SARS-CoV-2 in host and monitoring the blood biochemical parameters for the assessment of disease severity leads to devise proper management and care to minimize mortality rate. The research studies on biochemical markers in COVID-19 published till May 15, 2020, are retrieved by using keywords “biochemical markers, biomarkers, COVID-19, and SARS-CoV-2” at web search engines (Google scholar & PubMed). Selected articles are reviewed for the selected biomarkers that can be useful prognosticators of mild and severe patient outcomes to provide assistance in clinical management of the outbreak for frontline medical personnel. Biochemical tests include panels of liver and renal functioning, lactate dehydrogenase, C-reactive protein, and interleukin-6 that have abnormal and deteriorated values as compared to normal controls and mild cases. Patients having baseline comorbidities such as hepatitis or chronic kidney disorder might develop multiorgan injuries during hospitalization but in other patients’ biomarkers measure the status of inflammatory response and drug therapy outcomes</p>
The occurrence of emerging contaminants like pharmaceutical drugs and personal care products in aquatic systems is now being identified as a potential risk to human health. Since conventional wastewater treatment systems are unable to remove them sufficiently, high concentrations of some of the commonly used drugs are reported to be occurring in many effluents. Microalgae-based systems have been investigated in recent years as an environmentally safe alternative to chemical oxidation methods for elimination of these emerging contaminants. Therefore, a process utilizing the microalgal consortium was assessed for its potential to tolerate environmentally high concentrations of pharmaceutical drugs and also to simultaneously remove the synthetic hormone estradiol, anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac, and antibacterial agent triclosan. The effective concentration with 50% mortality for the consortium was determined for each contaminant as 16, 8, and 8 mg L−1 for estradiol, diclofenac, and triclosan, respectively. These three drugs were then spiked separately in algal growth media at effective concentration with 50% mortality, and the microalgal growth in presence of these drugs and the drug removal was monitored in shake-flask setup. The study shows substantial removal of estradiol 91.73% ± 0.0175, diclofenac 74.68% ± 0.0092, and triclosan 78.47% ± 0.015 by the microalgal consortium during their growth phase. Further, it was observed that degradation of the drugs by microalgae was the prominent removal mechanism and not adsorption. Estradiol and diclofenac did not show any immediate negative impacts on the microalgal growth as seen from the biomass and chlorophyll content measurements. However, triclosan proved detrimental to the microalgal growth as the consortium did not survive beyond 5 days after spiking. Promising results for emerging contaminants removal was obtained, and a treatment system can be designed to remove different drugs from wastewater by using the naturally occurring microalgal consortium.
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