Dear colleagues,

My co-authors and I are pleased to announce the publication of our new
article "Pharmaceuticals in the blubber of live free-swimming common
bottlenose dolphins (*Tursiops truncatus*)."

Ocampos, A.I., Guinn, M.A., Elliott, J., Wittmaack, C., Sinclair, C.,
Abdullah, H., Orbach, D.N. 2024. Pharmaceuticals in the blubber of live
free-swimming common bottlenose dolphins (*Tursiops truncatus*).
*iScience *27(12):
111507. doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.111507

Highlights:

   - Bottlenose dolphins are bioindicator species of ecosystem health
   - Pharmaceuticals found in the blubber of 30 dolphins (24 live) in the
   Gulf of Mexico
   - Detected pharmaceuticals included opioids, muscle relaxants, and
   sedatives
   - Pharmaceuticals in the marine ecosystem appear to be a long-standing
   issue

Summary:
Pharmaceuticals prevent and treat diseases, yet inappropriate intake can
result in harmful effects including mortality. Contaminants have become
recurrent public and wildlife health concerns. Bioaccumulation of
contaminants can occur throughout trophic levels of the food web. Dolphins
are apex predators often used as sentinel species to assess the health of
marine ecosystems because their lipid-rich blubber stores contaminants.We
used blubber samples collected from live free-swimming and postmortem
common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in the Gulf of Mexico to
explore the presence of pharmaceutical contaminants in the marine
ecosystem.Targeted analysis of blubber using ultra-performance liquid
chromatography coupled with Orbitrap Fusion Tribrid mass spectrometry
confirmed the presence of fentanyl, carisoprodol, or meprobamate in 30 of
the 89 dolphins assessed. We provide the first detection of human
pharmaceuticals stored in live free-swimming marine mammals, with important
implications for understanding ecosystem health.

The article is available open access through iScience:
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(24)02734-2

Thank you,
Dara Orbach, PhD

Department of Life Sciences,
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
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