Pharmaco-EcoMicrobiology: A newer component of medical sciences bridging pharmacovigilance, ecology, and environmental microbiology

Summary: Environmental scientists are now raising great concern on the impact of drugs on the environment and microbiologists are concerned about increasing antibiotic resistance due to irrational usage. However, a focus on the impact by the use of antibiotics (irrational/prescribed) to the environment at therapeutic doses has not been instituted. Even the World Health Organization (WHO) defined “Pharmacovigilance” activities as the monitoring, detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of any adverse reactions to drugs at therapeutic concentration on animals and humans. Nevertheless, there is little attention being given to identifying the adverse effects (ADEs) of antimicrobial agents on the environment (given at therapeutic doses). This issue has been highlighted in the present commentary and a new domain, “Pharmaco-EcoMicrobiology”, has been proposed which should deal with and monitor such adverse effects. The term “Pharmaco-EcoMicrobiology” has been proposed to define the interplay between antimicrobial pharmacological agents and animate microbial ecology. This new domain, “Pharmaco-EcoMicrobiology”, has been derived by the aggregation of three important branches of science (pharmacology + ecology + microbiology) and would be responsible for studying the ADEs due to antimicrobial drugs excreted in environment. Keywords: Environmental toxicology, Pharmacology, Pharmacovigilance, Pharmaco-EcoMicrobiology, Ecology, Microbiology, Adverse drug effect