Imperial College London
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DrLeonBarron

Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health

Reader in Analytical & Environmental Sciences
 
 
 
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leon.barron

 
 
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Location

 

Norfolk PlaceSt Mary's Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Adhikari:2023:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159351,
author = {Adhikari, S and Kumar, R and Driver, EM and Bowes, DA and Ng, KT and Sosa-Hernandez, JE and Oyervides-Muñoz, MA and Melchor-Martínez, EM and Martínez-Ruiz, M and Coronado-Apodaca, KG and Smith, T and Bhatnagar, A and Piper, BJ and McCall, KL and Parra-Saldivar, R and Barron, LP and Halden, RU},
doi = {10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159351},
journal = {Science of the Total Environment},
pages = {1--9},
title = {Occurrence of Z-drugs, benzodiazepines, and ketamine in wastewater in the United States and Mexico during the Covid-19 pandemic},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159351},
volume = {857},
year = {2023}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Z-drugs, benzodiazepines and ketamine are classes of psychotropic drugs prescribed for treating anxiety, sleep disorders and depression with known side effects including an elevated risk of addiction and substance misuse. Both groups of these drugs have a strong potential for misuse, which has escalated over the years and was hypothesized here to have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) constitutes a fast, easy, and relatively inexpensive approach to epidemiological surveys for understanding the incidence and frequency of uses of these drugs. In this study, we analyzed wastewater (n=376) from 50 cities across the United States and Mexico from July to October 2020 to estimate drug use rates during a pandemic event. Both time and flow proportional composite and grab samples of untreated municipal wastewater were analyzed using solid-phase extraction followed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry to determine loadings of alprazolam, clonazepam, diazepam, ketamine, lorazepam, nordiazepam, temazepam, zolpidem, and zaleplon in raw wastewater. Simultaneously, prescription data of the aforementioned drugs were extracted from the Medicaid database from 2019 to 2021. Results showed high detection frequencies of ketamine (90%), lorazepam (87%), clonazepam (76%) and temazepam (73%) across both Mexico and United States and comparatively lower detection frequencies for zaleplon (22%), zolpidem (9%), nordiazepam (<1%), diazepam (<1%), and alprazolam (<1%) during the pandemic. Average mass consumption rates, estimated using WBE and reported in units of mg/day/1000 persons, ranged between 62 (temazepam) and 1100 (clonazepam) in the United States. Results obtained from the Medicaid database also showed a significant change (p<0.05) in the prescription volume between the first quarter of 2019 (before the pandemic) and the first quarter of 2021 (pandemic event) for alprazolam, clonazepam and lorazepam.
AU  - Adhikari,S
AU  - Kumar,R
AU  - Driver,EM
AU  - Bowes,DA
AU  - Ng,KT
AU  - Sosa-Hernandez,JE
AU  - Oyervides-Muñoz,MA
AU  - Melchor-Martínez,EM
AU  - Martínez-Ruiz,M
AU  - Coronado-Apodaca,KG
AU  - Smith,T
AU  - Bhatnagar,A
AU  - Piper,BJ
AU  - McCall,KL
AU  - Parra-Saldivar,R
AU  - Barron,LP
AU  - Halden,RU
DO  - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159351
EP  - 9
PY  - 2023///
SN  - 0048-9697
SP  - 1
TI  - Occurrence of Z-drugs, benzodiazepines, and ketamine in wastewater in the United States and Mexico during the Covid-19 pandemic
T2  - Science of the Total Environment
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159351
UR  - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36243065
UR  - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722064506?via%3Dihub
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/100141
VL  - 857
ER  -
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