Mons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).1. Introduction
Mons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ four.0/).1. Introduction At the moment, 40 of the world’s population, estimated at 7.2 billion people today, reside in about 2100 coastal cities [1]. Even so, the higher population concentration in the world’s coastal cities raises some concerns due to the fact there are many men and women living in this modest location of the world’s land surface, estimated at involving four and eight , thus causing intensive anthropic use of the narrow coastal locations [2,4]. Consequently, this high concentration of folks exposes coastal ecosystems to distinct anthropogenic pressures, including the disposal ofResources 2021, ten, 114. https://doi.org/10.3390/resourceshttps://www.mdpi.com/journal/resourcesResources 2021, ten,two ofmunicipal wastewater within the marine environment [5]. This sewage can include thousands of chemical substances, for instance pharmaceuticals and personal care items (PPCPs), that constitute a vast group of emerging environmental contaminants, from various therapeutic classes, such as antiretroviral (ARV) drugs [80]. ARVs emerged GLPG-3221 Biological Activity inside the 20th century when acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) immediately spread across the 5 continents [11]. These days, therapies with ARVs aim to reduce viral load, improving the host immune system once HIV mostly attacks the CD4T cells, a important element within the body’s immune system [124]. Primarily based on their molecular mechanism of action, three classes of ARVs are widely utilized: (i) nucleoside/nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), namely abacavir, didanosine, lamivudine, tenofovir, and zidovudine; (ii) non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), namely efavirenz, etravirine, and nevirapine; and (iii) protease inhibitors (PI), namely atazanavir, darunavir, lopinavir, ritonavir, and tipranavir. Each of those classes, represented by 13 ARVs, target a phase of the HIV virus life cycle [124]. Advances in ARVs therapy, basically following the development of PSB-603 Antagonist Extremely Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), a treatment regimen comprising a combination of three or far more ARVs, made it feasible to transform a syndrome, that was previously perceived to become a diagnostic to an announced death, into a illness with chronicity prospects [124]. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS [11] estimates that 37.9 million men and women worldwide have been living with HIV/AIDS in 2018. Consequently, following the higher worldwide consumption of ARVs, these drugs have constantly been introduced into aquatic ecosystems by way of their most important routes of human excretion, urine and faeces, a method that’s allied to the absence or inefficacy of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) [80]. Numerous studies carried out in Norway [8], Kenya [15], Greece [9] and South Africa [10] reported high concentrations of ARVs, commonly at L-1 levels, in influents and effluents of WWTPs with the secondary remedy level (e.g., atazanavir, nevirapine and efavirenz). Additionally, the presence of ARVs in the aquatic environment was previously reported in unique environmental matrices for instance river water samples in South Africa (e.g., nevirapine, efavirenz and emtricitabine) and in sediments and waters of an estuary in France (namely abacavir, lamivudine, nelfinavir, nevirapine, ritonavir and saquinavir) [16,17]. Having said that, despite the proven occurrence of ARVs in aquatic environments, there’s a terrific scarcity of studies regarding the biological effects of ARVs in aquatic organisms, which include algae, crustaceans, fish and echi.