Varying the exposure period and duration of neuroactive pharmaceuticals and their metabolites modulates effects on the visual motor response in zebrafish (Danio rerio) larvae.

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products are emerging contaminants that are increasingly detected in surface waters around the world. Despite the rise in environmental detections, measured concentrations are still typically low, raising the importance of environmental risk assessments that focus on ecologically relevant sublethal endpoints, such as altered behavior. Neuroactive pharmaceuticals, like mental health medications, pain killers, etc., may be particularly potent in this regard as they are specifically designed to cause behavioral changes without causing physiologic impairment in mammalian systems. We screened 15 different popular neuroactive pharmaceuticals, ranging from antidepressants (including 3 major antidepressant metabolites), anxiety medications, and pain killers, under three different exposure scenarios (repeated, late acute and early transient exposure) to look for behavioral effects in larval zebrafish using the visual motor response (VMR). Drugs were screened at 0, 1, 10, and 100 μg/L in the repeated exposure scenario, and at 0 and 100 μg/L in the late acute and early transient exposure scenarios. Eight of the 15 compounds tested, specifically the antidepressants amitriptyline, fluoxetine, nor-fluoxetine, paroxetine, sertraline, nor-sertraline, venlafaxine, and the antipsychotic drug haloperidol decreased swimming activity by 25% to 40% under repeated exposure conditions. Five of the compounds (amitriptyline, fluoxetine, nor-fluoxetine, paroxetine, and sertraline) also significantly decreased activity by 17% to 31% in the late acute exposure paradigm. Three compounds (fluoxetine, paroxetine and venlafaxine) significantly altered swimming activity with early transient exposure, however creating a hyperactive response and increasing activity from 24% to 28%, while haloperidol significantly decreased activity by 31%. This paper is, to our knowledge, the first to screen so many neuroactive pharmaceuticals, including major metabolites, in parallel under multiple exposure conditions. We show that antidepressants most consistently alter VMR swimming activity. Additionally, we show that major antidepressant metabolites can potentially alter behavior as much as their parent compounds. Furthermore, we show that the magnitude and direction of behavioral effect is dependent on the exposure duration and period, indicating that a more diverse experimental approach might be needed to more accurately assess the risk these compounds pose to the environment.