When vultures are dying of anti-inflammatories’ overdose

[6 July 2007 - 10h34]

The line between health and the environment is a fine one… and sometimes that line snaps! For instance in India, where three species of vulture are now in danger of extinction because, it seems, they have been ingesting too much diclofenac – a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). But how did this happen?

Over the course of the last fifteen years, 95% of vultures on the Indian sub-continent have disappeared. At first this was thought to be due to an infectious disease but this theory was soon abandoned when attention turned to diclofenac, an NSAID once widely used in veterinary medicine.

Throughout these years vultures had been feeding on the carcases of cattle that had been treated with diclofenac. And post-mortem studies (autopsies – editor’s note) have belatedly shown that these raptors were susceptible to residues of this medication with consequences ranging from renal insufficiency to visceral gout – an illness fatal in birds.

Today, veterinary use of diclofenac is prohibited in India, but not in the other countries of the region. Because of their depleted numbers vultures are no longer able to perform the very important function of “cleaning up” in this part of the world where large numbers of animal carcases are left to rot on public roads. As Christian Jouanin points out in the French National Pharmacy Academy Newsletter, “this role is now performed by rats and dogs”. But not as efficiently it seems. “Which only increases the risk of human diseases such as rabies and plague”. And after all, the fault lies with us…

Source : Lettre de l’Académie nationale de Pharmacie, No. 2 - 2007

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