Ecotoxicological evaluation of the antimalarial drug chloroquine

There is limited information available about the potential environmental effects of chloroquine (CQ), a widely used antimalarial agent and a promising inexpensive drug in the management of HIV disease. The acute effects of CQ were studied using four ecotoxicological model systems. The most sensitive bioindicator was the immobilization of the cladoceran Daphnia magna, with an EC50 of 12 microM CQ at 72 h and a non-observed adverse effect level of 2.5 microM CQ, followed very closely by the decrease of the uptake of neutral red and the reduction of the lysosomal function in the fish cell line PLHC-1 derived from the top minnow Poeciliopsis lucida, probably due to the selective accumulation of the drug into the lysosomes. There was significant cellular stress as indicated by the increases on metallothionein and glucose-6P dehydrogenase levels after 24 h of exposure and succinate dehydrogenase activity mainly after 48 h. No changes were observed for ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase (EROD) activity. The least sensitive model was the inhibition of bioluminescence in the bacterium Vibrio fischeri. An increase of more than five-fold in the toxicity from 24 to 72 h of exposure was observed for the inhibition of the growth in the alga Chlorella vulgaris and the content of total protein and MTS tetrazolium salt metabolization in PLHC-1 cells. At the morphological level, the most evident alterations in PLHC-1 cultures were hydropic degeneration from 25 microM CQ after 24h of exposure and the presence of many cells with pyknotic nuclei, condensed cytoplasm and apoptosis with concentrations higher than 50 microM CQ after 48 h of exposure. In conclusion, CQ should be classified as harmful to aquatic organisms.