Organic micropollutants paracetamol and ibuprofen—toxicity, biodegradation, and genetic background of their utilization by bacteria

Abstract

Currently, analgesics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are classified as one of the most emerging group of xenobiotics and have been detected in various natural matrices. Among them, monocyclic paracetamol and ibuprofen, widely used to treat mild and moderate pain are the most popular. Since long-term adverse effects of these xenobiotics and their biological and pharmacokinetic activity especially at environmentally relevant concentrations are better understood, degradation of such contaminants has become a major concern. Moreover, to date, conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are not fully adapted to remove that kind of micropollutants. Bioremediation processes, which utilize bacterial strains with increased degradation abilities, seem to be a promising alternative to the chemical methods used so far. Nevertheless, despite the wide prevalence of paracetamol and ibuprofen in the environment, toxicity and mechanism of their microbial degradation as well as genetic background of these processes remain not fully characterized. In this review, we described the current state of knowledge about toxicity and biodegradation mechanisms of paracetamol and ibuprofen and provided bioinformatics analysis concerning the genetic bases of these xenobiotics decomposition.

Ibuprofen Degradation and Associated Bacterial Communities in Hyporheic Zone Sediments

“…Bootstrap values (based on 1000 replications) above 70% are shown at branch nodes. Figure S8: Hypothetical ibuprofen degradation pathways in oxic hyporheic zone sediments based on the transformation products identified in the current study and previous studies as reported in [48]. Table S1: Sequences and annealing temperature of primer sets targeting representative ibuprofen-responsive taxa (400 µM ibuprofen treatment; Figures 2 and 3, Table S2).…”

“…Indeed, previous studies using pure cultures have shown variable biodegradation pathways for ibuprofen [48]. 2-hydroxyibuprofen was the most abundant transformation intermediate detected during ibuprofen degradation in the hyporheic zone sediments ( Figure S2).…”

Effects of Low Concentration of Selected Analgesics and Successive Bioaugmentation of the Activated Sludge on Its Activity and Metabolic Diversity

“…In this study, we focused on the visualization and proving that low concentrations of the analgesics, which are detected in the influents are efficiently removed from the sewage, since the large body of the literature is concerned about the concentrations far exceeding those detected in the environment [10]. The abiotic control SWc established within this study confirmed that the removal of the analyzed drugs resulted from the biological activity of the AS microflora.…”

17α-ethynylestradiol (EE2) limits the impact of ibuprofen upon respiration by streambed biofilms in a sub-urban stream

“…Given ibuprofen's potential as a biofilm control agent (Reśliński et al 2015;Shah et al 2018;Żur et al 2018;Oliveira et al 2019), we were surprised to observe that it had no effect upon biofilm biomass within our experiments. This, however, may reflect the development of microbial resistance to anthropogenic stressors such as pharmaceuticals in agricultural and urban catchments to (e.g.…”