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Abstract
The biodegradation of five pharmaceutical ingredients (PIs) of different therapeutic classes, namely antibiotics (trimethoprim, sulfametoxazole and ciprofloxacin), anti-inflammatory (diclofenac) and anti-epileptic (carbamazepine), by two distinct microbial consortia, was investigated. For the monitoring of biodegradation assays, a simple HPLC-DAD (High Performance Liquid Chromatography – Diode Array Detector) method was developed and validated. The separation of the target pharmaceuticals was performed using an environmental friendly mobile phase in a gradient mode of 0.1% triethylamine (TEA) in water acidified at pH 2.23 with trifluoroacetic acid (TFAA) and ethanol as organic solvent. The method revealed to be selective, linear and precise in the range of 1.0 to 30.0 μg/mL for all PIs. Biodegradation assays were performed using activated sludge and a bacterial consortium (able to degrade fluoroaromatic compounds) supplemented with the target PIs at a final concentration of 25 μg/mL. The results revealed that activated sludge removed the target compounds more efficiently than the bacterial consortium.
Acknowledgments
A.R. Ribeiro and M.F. Carvalho were sponsored by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal (SFRH/BD/64999/2009 and SFRH/BPD/44670/2008, respectively) and Fundo Social Europeu (FSE), Programa Operacional Potencial Humano (POPH), Quadro de Referência Estratégico Nacional (QREN) and MCTES. This work was supported by CESPU (09-GCQF-CICS-09) and FCT under the projects FluoroPharma PTDC/EBB-EBI/111699/2009 and PEst-C/EQB/LA0016/2011. The authors thank to undergraduate students Maria Teresa Soares and Cristina Maranhão for their collaboration and to Parada WWTP for activated sludge supplying.