Effect of Ibuprofen on the growth of Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata

Sammanfattning: Pharmaceuticals are an important class of pollutants in aquatic ecosystems. Detected concentration are typically in the range 1 ng/L – 1 μg/L. Traditional wastewater treatment does not provide a complete removal of these contaminants; hence, they may have a negative impact on the environment. In addition, microalgae are an ecologically-meaningful target group of species for bioindication purposes as well as primary production and oxygen supply. The present work aimed to investigate the effect of Ibuprofen on the green alga Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata. Algal cultures were exposed to five different concentrations of the drug (5, 15, 45, 135, 405 mg/L) for four days. Absorbance measured at 680 nm was determined every day and obtained data were transformed into cell concentration (cells/mL) by a previously prepared calibration curve. Specific growth rate, generation time, percent inhibition and effective concentration were calculated. Moreover, one way ANOVA with Tukey’s test were applied to observe differences between groups and time periods. Based on this study, all the cultures treated with Ibuprofen had a growth inhibition as well as presenting a lag phase. Increasing the Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory drug (NSAID) concentration reduced the growth rate and consequently, increased the percent inhibition in a concentration-dependent manner. According to this report, new research should be focused on the development of hybrid systems for degradation and removal of pharmaceuticals. NSAID pollution may lead to a reduction in the diversity and number of functional groups of eukaryotic algae. Finally, more research should be devoted to the toxicity of drugs in a variety of test organisms and development of reliable methods for toxicity test at low and chronic exposures to achieve more realistic conclusions.