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. 2022 Sep 10;838(Pt 2):155916.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155916. Epub 2022 May 12.

Impact of COVID- 19 pandemic on antidepressants consumptions by wastewater analysis in Turkey

Evsen Yavuz-Guzel  1 , Aslı Atasoy  2 , İsmail Ethem Gören  3 , Nebile Daglioglu  4
Affiliations

Impact of COVID- 19 pandemic on antidepressants consumptions by wastewater analysis in Turkey

Evsen Yavuz-Guzel et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major challenge worldwide, forcing countries to take restrictive measures beyond conventional methods in their fight against the spread of the disease. Followingly, many studies have been conducted on the effects of these measures on mental health. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) was used in this study to monitor and estimate changes in antidepressant use under normal conditions (2019) and COVID-19 pandemic conditions (2020). Likewise, this study utilized wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) to monitor and assess changing trends from the pre-pandemic period (2019) to COVID-19 pandemic conditions in antidepressant use (2020). Wastewater samples were collected from 11 cities in Turkey throughout six sampling periods covering the pre-pandemic and during-pandemic periods (June 2019-December 2020). Then, samples were analyzed via LC-MS/MS method. As a result, we observed that venlafaxine was the drug with the highest concentration (mean ± SD: 103.6 ± 112.1 mg/1000p/day). Moreover, city number 6 presented the highest venlafaxine use and the most dramatic increase during the pandemic period. Finally, this study revealed the potential of WBE to estimate the changing trends in mental health during the ongoing pandemic.

Keywords: Antidepressants; COVID-19; Drug consumption rate changes; Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE).

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Unlabelled Image
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Average consumptions observed for 8 targeted compounds during normal conditions (2019) and COVID-19 pandemic conditions (2020) (*the venlafaxine results were reduced 10 times to facilitate comparison).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Weekly variations of all antidepressant consumptions between normal and pandemic periods.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Temporal patterns in average consumptions for all drugs between normal conditions (2019) and COVID-19 pandemic conditions (2020) (*the venlafaxine results were reduced 10 times to facilitate comparison).
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Drop-line graph for average consumptions (mg/1000p/day) of total antidepressant (SUM) in 11 cities in Turkey by study periods.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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