Carbamazepine exposure in the sea anemones Anemonia sulcata and Actinia equina: Metabolite identification and physiological responses

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals and other emerging contaminants (EC) have been increasingly detected and measured in coastal waters and large effort has been devoted to knowing the effects these substances have in coastal ecosystems. Anthozoa class is underrepresented in ecotoxicology studies despite some of their species being endangered. Anemonia sulcata and Actinia equina are species widely distributed in the Mediterranean Sea. The objectives of this work have been to evaluate the ability of these species to accumulate carbamazepine (CBZ) from water, to determine the effects of this pharmaceutical on some physiological and biochemical endpoints and to characterize the degradation routes followed by this compound in Anthozoa tissues (biotransformation) and water. Sea anemones were exposed to 1 μg L−1 and 100 μg L−1 of CBZ in artificial sea water in a semi-static system for 8 days. At several times small portions of the tentacles and whole organisms were taken. Ion transport (measured as NKATPase activity), energetic metabolism (measured as glucose and lactate levels) and nitrogen excretion (measured as ammonia concentration in tissues) were determined. CBZ-exposed individuals of A. sulcata and A. equina were analyzed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS) on a quadrupole-time-of-flight (QqTOF). The structures of nine metabolites have been tentatively identified using HRMS and HRMS/MS data with the aid of the free available Medline database. The current work constitutes the first study on the identification of Cnidarian metabolites of CBZ in species of the Anthozoa class.