The apparently very variable potency of the anti-depressant fluoxetine

Abstract

The anti-depressant fluoxetine is widely present in the aquatic environment. Typical river concentrations are in the low ng/L range. Many ecotoxicity studies have assessed the effects of this pharmaceutical on a range of aquatic species. Some studies report that ng, or even pg, per litre concentrations cause effects, whereas other studies report that effects only occur when the water concentration is in the μg/L range. It seems unlikely that all reported effects will be repeatable. Many of the studies have considerable limitations. Currently it is impossible to ascertain what environmental concentrations of fluoxetine pose a risk to aquatic organisms. The key question can be answered only by high quality, reproducible research.

Can the behaviour of threespine stickleback parasitized with Schistocephalus solidus be replicated by manipulating host physiology?

“…Third, we set each treatment to the same duration (72 h), such that we had to choose drug concentrations that would give an effect during short exposures. Low concentrations of fluoxetine seem to cause effects that higher concentrations do not cause, hence the importance of the concentration-response relationship (Sumpter et al, 2014).…”

Effects of pharmaceuticals present in aquatic environment on Phase I metabolism in fish

“…Thus, they might have a great potential to negatively affect aquatic vertebrate populations. Fluoxetine is often used to assess impacts of SSRIs on fish with emphasis on fish behaviour (Clements and Schreck, 2007;Sumpter et al, 2014) and stress (Abreu et al, 2014). It has been noted that SSRIs and other antidepressant drugs also act on fish serotonin-like receptor (5-HT1A and 5-HT2A) and serotonin transporter protein transcript (SERT) levels.…”

Scientific integrity issues in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry: Improving research reproducibility, credibility, and transparency

“…We discuss environmental chemistry separately because it has different scientific integrity challenges than does the biological side of ecotoxicology. Unlike the situation in the biological side of ecotoxicology where serious questions have been aired about the reproducibility of some of the published research (Scott , ; Sumpter et al ; Sumpter et al ), analytical environmental chemistry does not appear to suffer from such problems to the same extent. The likely reason for this is that quality assurance mechanisms are routinely incorporated into analytical projects that involve the measurement of environmental concentrations of chemicals, thus ensuring that the results are accurate.…”