Searching for the correlations between the use of different groups of pharmaceuticals from wastewaters

Michal Bodík; Tomáš Mackuľak; Miroslav Feher; Andrea Vojs Staňová; Kateřina Grabicová; Dóra Varjúová; Igor Bodík

doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2021.112973

Searching for the correlations between the use of different groups of pharmaceuticals from wastewaters

Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2021 Nov 15:228:112973. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2021.112973. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Michal Bodík¹, Tomáš Mackuľak², Miroslav Feher², Andrea Vojs Staňová³, Kateřina Grabicová⁴, Dóra Varjúová², Igor Bodík²

Affiliations

¹ Nanotechnology group, ETH Zürich, Säumerstrasse 4, CH-8803 Rüschlikon, Switzerland. Electronic address: mbodik@ethz.ch.
² Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Chemistry and Food Technology, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Radlinského 9, 812 37 Bratislava, Slovak Republic.
³ Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters, South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Zátiší 728/II, 389 25 Vodňany, Czech Republic; Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Ilkovičova 6, 842 15 Bratislava, Slovak Republic.
⁴ Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters, South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Zátiší 728/II, 389 25 Vodňany, Czech Republic.

PMID: 34794023
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2021.112973

Abstract

Wastewater contains a wealth of information about the inhabitants of cities. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has become an effective tool for monitoring public health by analyzing various biomarkers (e.g., chemicals and microorganisms) in wastewater. This way, the estimation of pharmaceuticals' consumption behavior and/or illicit drugs can be calculated. However, monitoring consumption alone is not the only option. If we consider wastewater as a statistical representation of the population's health, medical information can be derived. In this work, we used data from 15 different wastewater treatment plants in Slovak Republic to explore correlations between the use of typical pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs. The analysis was based on the wastewater monitoring data from four years (2016-2019), and 68 different compounds were taken into account. One of the strongest correlations found was between Antihyperlipidemics and Antihypertensives, with Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.82. This type of analysis within the WBE represents a new potential as an additional source of information for the pharmaceutical, medical and government sectors in assessing health risk factors in the population. Such an evaluation method has even a great potential for artificial intelligence and machine learning for calculating health risk factors together with other sources of data.

Keywords: Drug abuse; Pearson's correlation coefficient; Pharmaceutical consumption; Wastewater-based epidemiology.