'Prozac Pollution' Making Fish Less Aggressive, Says Study
Anonymous Coward in the Ocean writes:
https://news.sky.com/story/prozac-pollution-making-fish-less-aggressive-says-study-11860507
Psychoactive drugs - including antidepressants - are altering the reproductive behaviour, anxiety levels, and anti-predator responses of fish in the wild, according to Australia's Monash University.
[...] According to the research[0], Prozac didn't change the feeding and foraging behaviour of solitary fish, however when it was applied to whole groups of fish it had a suppressive effect.
Last year, another study[1] covering the impact of Prozac pollution on fish said it could last for three generations, blunting the stress responses in exposed embryos and any of that embryo's descendants once it had matured.
The study, from the University of Ottowa, showed how zebrafish didn't explore their tank as much when they were treated with Prozac.
Dr Vance Trudeau, a neuroendocrinologist, said there were good reasons to believe the effects that his study revealed could also occur in humans.
This is because the core stress hormone cortisone has the same impact in fish as it does on humans.
0Field-realistic antidepressant exposure disrupts group foraging dynamics in mosquitofish[$], Biology Letters (DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4711484)
1Transgenerational hypocortisolism and behavioral disruption are induced by the antidepressant fluoxetine in male zebrafish Danio rerio[$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1811695115)
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