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Impacts of Psychopharmaceuticals on the Neurodevelopment of Aquatic Wildlife: A Call for Increased Knowledge Exchange across Disciplines to Highlight Implications for Human Health

The global use of psychopharmaceuticals such as antidepressants has been steadily increasing. However, the environmental consequences of increased use are rarely considered by medical professionals. Worldwide monitoring efforts have shown that pharmaceuticals are amongst the multitude of anthropogen...

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Autores principales: Chan, Stephanie J., Nutting, Veronica I., Natterson, Talia A., Horowitz, Barbara N.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8151291/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34065793
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105094
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author Chan, Stephanie J.
Nutting, Veronica I.
Natterson, Talia A.
Horowitz, Barbara N.
author_facet Chan, Stephanie J.
Nutting, Veronica I.
Natterson, Talia A.
Horowitz, Barbara N.
author_sort Chan, Stephanie J.
collection PubMed
description The global use of psychopharmaceuticals such as antidepressants has been steadily increasing. However, the environmental consequences of increased use are rarely considered by medical professionals. Worldwide monitoring efforts have shown that pharmaceuticals are amongst the multitude of anthropogenic pollutants found in our waterways, where excretion via urine and feces is thought to be the primary mode of pharmaceutical contamination. Despite the lack of clarity surrounding the effects of the unintentional exposure to these chemicals, most notably in babies and in developing fetuses, the US Environmental Protection Agency does not currently regulate any psychopharmaceuticals in drinking water. As the underlying reasons for the increased incidence of mental illness—particularly in young children and adolescents—are poorly understood, the potential effects of unintentional exposure warrant more attention. Thus, although links between environmental contamination and physiological and behavioral changes in wildlife species—most notably in fish—have been used by ecologists and wildlife biologists to drive conservation policy and management practices, we hypothesize that this knowledge may be underutilized by medical professionals. In order to test this hypothesis, we created a hierarchically-organized citation network built around a highly-cited “parent” article to explore connections between aquatic toxicology and medical fields related to neurodevelopment. As suspected, we observed that studies in medical fields such as developmental neuroscience, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and psychiatry cite very few to no papers in the aquatic sciences. Our results underscore the need for increased transdisciplinary communication and information exchange between the aquatic sciences and medical fields.
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spelling pubmed-81512912021-05-27 Impacts of Psychopharmaceuticals on the Neurodevelopment of Aquatic Wildlife: A Call for Increased Knowledge Exchange across Disciplines to Highlight Implications for Human Health Chan, Stephanie J. Nutting, Veronica I. Natterson, Talia A. Horowitz, Barbara N. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The global use of psychopharmaceuticals such as antidepressants has been steadily increasing. However, the environmental consequences of increased use are rarely considered by medical professionals. Worldwide monitoring efforts have shown that pharmaceuticals are amongst the multitude of anthropogenic pollutants found in our waterways, where excretion via urine and feces is thought to be the primary mode of pharmaceutical contamination. Despite the lack of clarity surrounding the effects of the unintentional exposure to these chemicals, most notably in babies and in developing fetuses, the US Environmental Protection Agency does not currently regulate any psychopharmaceuticals in drinking water. As the underlying reasons for the increased incidence of mental illness—particularly in young children and adolescents—are poorly understood, the potential effects of unintentional exposure warrant more attention. Thus, although links between environmental contamination and physiological and behavioral changes in wildlife species—most notably in fish—have been used by ecologists and wildlife biologists to drive conservation policy and management practices, we hypothesize that this knowledge may be underutilized by medical professionals. In order to test this hypothesis, we created a hierarchically-organized citation network built around a highly-cited “parent” article to explore connections between aquatic toxicology and medical fields related to neurodevelopment. As suspected, we observed that studies in medical fields such as developmental neuroscience, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and psychiatry cite very few to no papers in the aquatic sciences. Our results underscore the need for increased transdisciplinary communication and information exchange between the aquatic sciences and medical fields. MDPI 2021-05-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8151291/ /pubmed/34065793 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105094 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Chan, Stephanie J.
Nutting, Veronica I.
Natterson, Talia A.
Horowitz, Barbara N.
Impacts of Psychopharmaceuticals on the Neurodevelopment of Aquatic Wildlife: A Call for Increased Knowledge Exchange across Disciplines to Highlight Implications for Human Health
title Impacts of Psychopharmaceuticals on the Neurodevelopment of Aquatic Wildlife: A Call for Increased Knowledge Exchange across Disciplines to Highlight Implications for Human Health
title_full Impacts of Psychopharmaceuticals on the Neurodevelopment of Aquatic Wildlife: A Call for Increased Knowledge Exchange across Disciplines to Highlight Implications for Human Health
title_fullStr Impacts of Psychopharmaceuticals on the Neurodevelopment of Aquatic Wildlife: A Call for Increased Knowledge Exchange across Disciplines to Highlight Implications for Human Health
title_full_unstemmed Impacts of Psychopharmaceuticals on the Neurodevelopment of Aquatic Wildlife: A Call for Increased Knowledge Exchange across Disciplines to Highlight Implications for Human Health
title_short Impacts of Psychopharmaceuticals on the Neurodevelopment of Aquatic Wildlife: A Call for Increased Knowledge Exchange across Disciplines to Highlight Implications for Human Health
title_sort impacts of psychopharmaceuticals on the neurodevelopment of aquatic wildlife: a call for increased knowledge exchange across disciplines to highlight implications for human health
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8151291/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34065793
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105094
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