Monitoring consumption of psychoactive pharmaceuticals using wastewater-based surveillance

Psychoactive pharmaceuticals, including antidepressants, anxiolytics, and antipsychotics, are widely used to manage mental health conditions. Monitoring of psychoactive pharmaceuticals and their metabolites through wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) provides objective, population-level information on patterns of mental health pharmaceutical consumption, disease prevalence, and potential misuse.

This research develops a high-throughput direct injection LC-MS/MS method for the simultaneous quantification of 30 psychoactive pharmaceutical biomarkers in wastewater, enabling cost-effective and large-scale monitoring. Key uncertainties, including their in-sample stability, freeze-thaw stability, in-sewer biomarker stability, and the suitability as biomarkers for WBS, are systematically evaluated. Utilizing the mass loads of biomarkers measured in wastewater and their corresponding sales data or prescription data in the same period, correction factors for commonly prescribed psychoactive pharmaceuticals are refined to improve the accuracy of back-calculated consumption estimates. The study further applies WBS to investigate temporal and spatial trends of psychoactive pharmaceutical use across Australia, providing valuable insights into public mental health surveillance.

Please note, this is a Student Progress Review presentation.