Psychotropic compounds from wastewater contamination affect nervous system development - Abstract The receiving water bodies that are sources of drinking water are continuously contaminated with psychotropic drugs – those that target the nervous system - through wastewater treatment facility effluent. Without mechanisms to remove or neutralize them, these drugs can reach the drinking water, cross maternal biological barriers, and alter embryonic gene expression. Is it not known how chronic exposure to the composite mixture of these drugs, including antidepressants and narcotics, even at very low doses, may represent a risk to human health. Psychotropic medications are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S. Together with psychotropic illicit drugs, a significant portion of these medications and their active metabolites are discharged into the receiving water bodies. With the prevalence of drugs in wastewater ever-increasing, so does the urgency of understanding the risks. Our central hypothesis is that developmental exposure to low levels of psychoactive drugs through contaminated water sources affects gene expression in the developing nervous system with behavioral consequences. This proposed basic biomedical research will expose developing zebrafish to an environmentally-relevant combination of psychotropic compounds to evaluate the effects of this form of exposure on gene expression and function of nervous system. Quantitative RT-PCR and in situ hybridization will be used to explore nervous system-specific changes in gene expression following drug exposure. A battery of larval behaviors ranging from basic locomotion to cognitive tasks will assess the functional consequences of developmental drug exposure. Finally, sensitive behaviors will be used to evaluate potential synergism between drugs. By raising zebrafish in dosed water as a proxy for human prenatal exposure through contaminated water, these experiments will identify sensitive behaviors and genes that are expressed in developing neural tissues. Strengthening the evidence that exposure to subtherapeutic levels of these drugs has adverse effects on development may inform intervention to remediation measures to reduce the risk to human health.
