Nevirapine in African surface waters induces liver histopathology in Oreochromis mossambicus: A laboratory exposure study

Effects of Two Antiretroviral Drugs on the Crustacean Daphnia magna in River Water

“…Biochemical markers have been proposed as an early warning indicator of populationlevel effect(s) from sub-lethal exposure concentrations [57,58]. Most studies on the effects of ARVs on aquatic organisms have reported mostly apical endpoints, e.g., immobilization, growth inhibition, or survival and behavior [4,5,12,13,15,28,29]. From the published literature, only a single study reported the effects of ARVs on aquatic organisms using enzymatic biomarkers [14].…”

“…For example, since the mid-2000s, detected concentrations of ARVs in the ecosystems have dramatically increased in different regions (Table S2). Yet, ecotoxicity studies of ARVs have only been published post 2010 [5,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. However, these are highly limited given the large number of ARV drugs on the market.…”

“…Growing evidence demonstrated that ARVs could potentially pose variant deleterious effects on non-target aquatic organisms at different trophic levels. These include bactericidal [12,27] and mutagenicity effects [28] in bacteria, growth inhibition and/or promotion in algae [28,29], immobilization of aquatic invertebrates [12], bioaccumulation and alteration of antioxidant systems in amphibians [14] as well as histological changes and growth rate inhibition in fish [5,13,15]. Notably, most of these studies were carried out using synthetic media; hence, they are not representative of the actual aquatic environment.…”

“…Notably, most of these studies were carried out using synthetic media; hence, they are not representative of the actual aquatic environment. To our knowledge, only two studies [13,30] assessed the effects of NVP in fish using borehole water as the exposure medium. This raises an urgent need for more studies in actual environmental matrixes (e.g., river water) to elucidate the mechanisms of ARVs' toxicity.…”