Aulsebrook, Lucinda C., Wong, Bob B.M., and Hall, Matthew D. (2023) Can pharmaceutical pollution alter the spread of infectious disease? A case study using fluoxetine. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378 (1873). 20220010.

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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 genotype of the pathogen. By contrast, the characteristics of unexposed animals, and thus the growth and density of susceptible hosts, were robust to fluoxetine. Using our data to parameterize an epidemiological model, we show that fluoxetine is unlikely to lead to a net increase or decrease in the likelihood of an infectious disease outbreak, as measured by a pathogen's transmission rate or basic reproductive number. Instead, any given pathogen genotype may experience a twofold change in likely fitness, but often in opposing directions. Our study demonstrates that changes in pharmaceutical pollution give rise to complex genotype-by-environment interactions in its influence of disease dynamics, with repercussions on pathogen genetic diversity and evolution.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Infectious disease ecology and evolution in a changing world’.

Item ID:	83896
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1471-2970
Copyright Information:	© 2023 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funders:	Australian Research Council (ARC)
Projects and Grants:	ARC FT180100248, ARC DP200102522, ARC FT190100014
Date Deposited:	28 Oct 2024 01:29
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3104 Evolutionary biology > 310405 Evolutionary ecology @ 40% 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3104 Evolutionary biology > 310407 Host-parasite interactions @ 40% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4102 Ecological applications > 410201 Bioavailability and ecotoxicology @ 20%
SEO Codes:	28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences @ 20% 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1803 Fresh, ground and surface water systems and management > 180301 Assessment and management of freshwater ecosystems @ 60% 19 ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATURAL HAZARDS > 1999 Other environmental policy, climate change and natural hazards > 199999 Other environmental policy, climate change and natural hazards not elsewhere classified @ 20%
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