Posted on 10/01/2009 1:01:09 AM PDT by neverdem
If birds hosting flu virus are exposed to the waterborne pollutant, they might develop drug-resistant strains, chemists worry
The premier flu-fighting drug is contaminating rivers downstream of sewage-treatment facilities, researchers in Japan confirm. The source: urinary excretion by people taking oseltamivir phosphate, best known as Tamiflu.
Concerns are now building that birds, which are natural influenza carriers, are being exposed to waterborne residues of Tamiflu’s active form and might develop and spread drug-resistant strains of seasonal and avian flu.
For their new study, Gopal Ghosh and his colleagues at Kyoto University sampled water discharged from three local sewage treatment plants and water at several points along two rivers into which the treated water flowed. Sampling started early in December 2008, as flu season got underway. The researchers sampled again at the height of the seasonal flu’s onslaught in early February and again as infection rates waned.
Tamiflu’s active form, oseltamivir carboxylate or OC, turned up in the treated sewage on every occasion, the researchers report online September 28 in Environmental Health Perspectives. Values were in the low nanograms per liter range during the first and last samplings, and reached a high of almost 300 ng/L at one outflow during the flu’s peak, a week when there were 1,738 recorded flu cases in Kyoto.
River residues showed up during only that second sampling — from low nanogram levels at most sampling points to a high of 190 ng/L in a portion of the Nishitakase River where treated sewage accounts for 90 percent of the flow.
Computer modeling has shown that OC should survive sewage treatment, notes Wolf von Tümpling Jr. of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, a federal institute in Magdeburg, Germany. Ghosh’s team is now the first to confirm this, he says...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Aint that just ducky?
So why is the active form showing up? Is this drug unable to be metabolized? I thought essentially all pharmaceuticals were metabolized or the active form is bound in the body. What other drugs are we not metabolizing? Maybe that’s what we get for giving the drug out to people who are not using to fight the virus. Makes me question efficacy or diagnostic criteria.
I think it acts more like an anticatalyst. Tamiflu is a neuraminidase inhibitor (the ‘N’ in H1N1). It essentially prevents the virus from releasing itself after infecting a cell. The amounts actually used in the body will be minute for that reason. If it was more complex the body would metabolize it further I’d assume. Many prescription drugs are not fully metabolized and released into sewage or pass through filtering back into the water supply, birth control pills are a big one.
Khadaffi was right. Here comes the fish flu...
Our ped wanted our sons to take Tamiflu last year. Besides the price (over $100 with insurance) we read how it can cause hallucinations in children. No sale.
A nanogram is a one billionth of a gram. Somehow I don’t think a few molecules of tamiflu per liter of water is going to do anything. Not unless a single bird can drink about 100 liters of water.
Eggs Ackley! Our ability to now test for minute fractions of this or that leads to these wild stories.
Thanks for clearing that up. I am more familiar with drugs of abuse in my field.
I wouldn’t expect any of this to be a problem.
Tamiflu isn’t a form of a virus. It’s merely a chemical that blocks the virus from infecting other cells.
I’d guess anything related to metabolites would, inherently, break down further along the chain. Certain mushrooms excluded. The more I read about what gets through our supposedly clean water the more beer I drink. :)
“Many prescription drugs are not fully metabolized and released into sewage or pass through filtering back into the water supply, birth control pills are a big one.”
Hence the heavy antibiotic smell you get in urine sometimes when you have to take them!
“Many prescription drugs are not fully metabolized and released into sewage or pass through filtering back into the water supply, birth control pills are a big one.”
Hence the heavy antibiotic smell you get in urine sometimes when you have to take them!
Just one more thing I don’t intend to worry about.
Ahem..........!
Then we will be taxed for each time we flush because that will be the only way to "save" birds.
Seriously, I find that the environment is being messed up by Pharmacutical companies. If they stopped creating new useless drugs then our earth would be "greener". OTOH, have there been studies about how many vitamins are in our water?
Like finding a Crumb in a giant bakery!
Indeed. This should be the least of our worries when our rivers, lakes and oceans are full of lethal levels of dihydrogen monoxide.
Some drugs are excreted unchanged. Their fate in the environment has usually been an afterthought.
Killjoy...
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