Susceptibility of phytoplankton to the increasing presence of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in the aquatic environment: A review.

Human and veterinary pharmaceuticals either in the form of un-metabolized, incompletely metabolized, and metabolized drugs are increasingly present in aquatic ecosystems. These active pharmaceutical ingredients from pharmaceutical industries, hospitals, agricultural, and domestic discharges find their way into water systems - where they adversely affect non-target organisms like phytoplankton. Different aspects of phytoplankton life; ranging from growth, reproduction, morphology, physiology, biochemical composition, oxidative response, proteomics, and transcriptomics are altered by pharmaceuticals.

Effects of the antimalarial lumefantrine on Lemna minor, Raphidocelis subcapitata and Chlorella vulgaris.

Lumefantrine is used to treat uncomplicated malaria caused by pure or mixed Plasmodium falciparum infections and as a prophylactic against recrudescence following artemether therapy. However, the pharmaceutical is released into the aquatic environment from industrial effluents, hospital discharges, and human excretion. This study assessed the effects of lumefantrine on the growth and physiological responses of the microalgae Chlorella vulgaris and Raphidocelis subcapitata (formerly known as Selenastrum capricornutum and Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata) and the aquatic macrophyte Lemna minor.