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Nimesulide poisoning in white-rumped vulture Gyps bengalensis in Gujarat, India

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Abstract

Population of white-rumped vulture has not recovered in India to a desired level even after diclofenac was banned in 2006. During 2019, there were two known separate incidents of white-rumped vulture mortality involving four white-rumped vultures in Gujarat. After post-mortem examinations, tissues of all four vultures were received for toxicological investigation at the National Centre for Avian Ecotoxicology, SACON. Tissues were screened for a set of toxic pesticides, and none of them was at detectable level. Subsequently, the tissues were analysed for thirteen NSAIDs and paracetamol. Of all the drugs tested, only nimesulide was detected in all the tissues (17–1395 ng/g) indicative of exposure. Visceral gout was also observed in all the four vultures during post-mortem. Residues of nimesulide in tissues with symptoms of gout indicated that the vultures died due to nimesulide poisoning. Although, other than diclofenac, many NSAIDs are suspected to be toxic to white-rumped vultures, only nimesulide is reported in the recent past with clear symptom of gout in wild dead white-rumped vultures similar to diclofenac. Since, nimesulide appears to act similar to diclofenac in exerting toxic effects, if veterinary use of nimesulide continues, white-rumped vulture are bound to suffer. Hence, it is recommended that nimesulide should be banned by the government to conserve white-rumped vulture in the Indian subcontinent. Further, an effective system is recommended to be put in place to collect the tissues of dead vultures for toxicological investigations and eventual conservation of the critically endangered species.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India for financial support, Gujarat state forest department for granting permits to collect vulture samples, Mr Kartik Shastri, Jivdaya Charitable Trust, Ahmedabad for sharing invaluable vulture tissues, Mr A Kaja Maideen, Ms E Jeevitha and Mr T Manikandan for their assistance in laboratory, Mr B Karthikeyan, Spinco Biotech, Chennai and his team for LCMS technical support. We are beholden to Dr K Sankar, Director, SACON for his encouragement.

Availability of data and materials

The data generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.

Funding

This study is part of a project work titled “National centre for surveillance and monitoring of impact of environmental contaminants on ecosystem components with special focus on birds in India”, funded by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Ecotoxicology, Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Coimbatore, 641108, India

    Kanthan Nambirajan, Subramanian Muralidharan & Aditya Roy Ashimkumar

  2. Jivdaya Charitable Trust, Ahmedabad, India

    Shashikant Jadhav

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  1. Kanthan Nambirajan
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  2. Subramanian Muralidharan
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Contributions

Kanthan Nambirajan: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, chemical analyses, data curation, writing—original draft. Subramanian Muralidharan: funding acquisition, resources, conceptualization, investigation, supervision, writing—review & editing. Aditya Roy Ashimkumar: sample collection. Shashikant Jadhav: post-mortem examination.

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Correspondence to Kanthan Nambirajan.

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Nambirajan, K., Muralidharan, S., Ashimkumar, A.R. et al. Nimesulide poisoning in white-rumped vulture Gyps bengalensis in Gujarat, India. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 57818–57824 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14702-y

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