Can pharmaceutical pollution alter the spread of infectious disease? A case study using fluoxetine.

ABSTRACT: Human activity is changing global environments at an unprecedented rate, imposing new ecological and evolutionary ramifications on wildlife dynamics, including host-parasite interactions. Here we investigate how an emerging concern of modern human activity, pharmaceutical pollution, influences the spread of disease in a population, using the water flea Daphnia magna and the bacterial pathogen Pasteuria ramosa as a model system. We found that exposure to different concentrations of fluoxetine-a widely prescribed psychoactive drug and widespread contaminant of aquatic ecosystems-affected the severity of disease experienced by an individual in a non-monotonic manner. The direction and magnitude of any effect, however, varied with both the infection outcome measured and the genot

SUBMITTER: Aulsebrook LC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9900710 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature