Bioremediation of carbamazepine by fungi and bacteria in wastewater

Abstract

Carbamazepine (CBZ), a psychiatric, antiepileptic drug; currently mainly used to treat diseases such as epilepsy and trigeminal neuralgia, it is an emerging pollutant, considered an essential source of contamination of water sources because of it is not fully metabolized by the body and is excreted via the urinary and fecal routes, unchanged or in the form of conjugated metabolites. These pollutants go through wastewater treatment; however, conventional treatments cannot degrade them, causing damage to the living beings that inhabit and need this natural resource to survive. Faced with this problem, this review's objective was to identify biological treatments with the use of microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) for the degradation of this recalcitrant compound. The microorganisms with the highest percentage of carbamazepine degradation identified were Labrys portucalensis F11 and Trametes versicolor; the first a bacterium that adapts to different carbon sources; and the second a so-called wood rot fungus, which has oxidative enzymes that allow the degradation of a wide range of emerging pollutants. Trametes versicolor, is the microorganism most studied for carbamazepine degradation processes, with degradation percentages of up to 94% at a temperature of 25 ° C and a pH of 4.5.