Abiotic and biotic transformation of torasemide - Occurrence of degradation products in the aquatic environment

Abstract The pharmaceutical torasemide is an important loop diuretic and was 2017 one of the ten most prescribed drugs in Germany. Despite its detection in different compartments of the urban water cycle including drinking water, no studies were so far performed to elucidate its fate in the environment and the occurrence of transformation products (TPs). Therefore, we investigated the phototransformation, microbial degradation, transformation with human liver microsomes and anodic oxidation of torasemide to obtain good coverage of environmentally relevant degradation products. Overall sixteen products were identified, covering the following reaction mechanisms: aromatic and aliphatic hydroxylation, including further oxidation to carboxylic acids and quinone imines, amide cleavage, N-dealkylation, N-dearylation, and sulfonamide hydrolysis to sulfonic acids. Especially the formation of quinone imines could be of concern as they are highly reactive electrophiles. Torasemide itself was observed in all investigated wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) samples and wastewater-impacted surface waters. The maximum detected concentration was about 350 ng L−1. Only three of the sixteen transformation products were generally observed in at least one of the samples and the most frequently detected TPs were the human metabolites hydroxytorasemide (TP 364a) and carboxytorasemide (TP 378a). The complete removal of TP 364a during wastewater treatment was in agreement with the results of microbial degradation experiments. TP 364a was most likely transformed into TP 378a, which was microbially less degraded in lab experiments. Based on estimated concentrations, TP 378a could reach about 1 μg L−1 in the investigated wastewater matrices.