Epidemiological Surveillance of Norovirus and Rotavirus in Sewage (2016–2017) in Valencia (Spain)

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to perform the molecular epidemiology of rotaviruses and noroviruses detected in sewage samples from a large wastewater facility from the city of Valencia, Spain. A total of 46 sewage samples were collected over a one-year period (September 2016 to September 2017). Norovirus and rotavirus were detected and quantified by RT-qPCR, genotyped by semi-nested RT-PCR and further characterized by sequencing and phylogenetic analyses. Noroviruses and rotaviruses were widely distributed in sewage samples (69.6% for norovirus GI, 76.0% norovirus GII, and 71.7% rotaviruses) and viral loads varied from 4.33 to 5.75 log PCRU/L for norovirus GI, 4.69 to 6.95 log PCRU/L for norovirus GII, and 4.08 to 6.92 log PCRU/L for rotavirus. Overall, 87.5% (28/32) of GI noroviruses could not be genotyped, 6.25% (2/32) of the samples contained GI.2 genotype, and another 6.25% (2/32) were positive for GI.4 genotype. The most common genotype of GII noroviruses was GII.2 (40%, 14/35), followed by GII.6 (8.6%, 3/35) and GII.17 (5.7%, 2/35) while the remaining GII strains could not be typed (45.7%, 16/35). Rotavirus VP4 genotype P[8] was the only one found in 19 out of 33 rotavirus-positive samples (57.7%). G2 was the most prevalent rotavirus VP7 genotype (15.2%, 5/33) followed by G3, G9, and G12, with two positive samples for each genotype (6.1%, 2/33). In one sample both G1 and G2 genotypes were detected simultaneously (3%). The results presented here show that the surveillance of noroviruses and rotaviruses in sewage is useful for the study of their transmission in the population and their molecular epidemiology.

Comparing analytical methods to detect SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater

“…The use of wastewater as a tool for epidemiology tracking, known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), has a long history of use in public health, particularly for human enteric viruses (Asghar et al, 2014;Cuevas-Ferrando et al, 2020;Hellmér et al, 2014;Miura et al, 2016;Prevost et al, 2015;Santiso-Bellón et al, 2020). In the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, WBE is being implemented globally for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA shed into wastewater, sewers, and sludge (Ahmed et al, 2020a;Bivins et al, 2020;Guerrero-Latorre et al, 2020;Haramoto et al, 2020;Kumar et al, 2020;La Rosa et al, 2020;Lodder and de Roda Husman, 2020;Medema et al, 2020;Prado et al, 2020;Randazzo et al, 2020aRandazzo et al, , 2020bRimoldi et al, 2020;Sherchan et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2020;Wu et al, 2020).…”

Metropolitan wastewater analysis for COVID-19 epidemiological surveillance

“…Compared to systematic testing of individuals, wastewater analysis is obviously less invasive, simpler and cheaper, but the sensitivity and reliability of this method remains to be shown. Previous work has established similar methods for the epidemiological surveillance of enteric viruses including norovirus, rotavirus ( Santiso-Bellón et al, 2020 ), hepatitis E virus ( Cuevas-Ferrando et al, 2020 ), influenza, and poliovirus ( Heijnen and Medema, 2011 ; Hellmér et al, 2014 ; Hovi et al, 2012 ), and recent publications ( Ahmed et al, 2020 ; Bivins et al, 2020 ; Haramoto et al, 2020 ; La Rosa et al, 2020 ; Lodder and de Roda Husman, 2020 ; Medema et al, 2020 ; Randazzo et al, 2020 ) suggest that COVID-19 detection in sewage is technically feasible, based on preliminary results obtained from a limited number of samples in China, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, and USA. Here, we have analyzed sewage water collected in the Valencian region from February to April 2020 to assess our ability to detect the virus during the earliest stages of an outbreak.…”

SARS-CoV-2 RNA titers in wastewater anticipated COVID-19 occurrence in a low prevalence area

“…Wastewater monitoring has been a successful strategy pursued to track chemical and biological markers of human activity including illicit drugs consumption, pharmaceuticals use/abuse, water pollution, and occurrence of antimicrobial resistance genes (Choi et al, 2018; de Oliveira et al, 2020; Lorenzo and Picó, 2019; Mercan et al, 2019). Viral diseases have been also surveilled by the detection of genetic material into wastewater as for enteric viruses (Hellmer et al, 2014; Prevost et al, 2015; Santiso-Bellón et al, 2020), re-emerging zoonotic hepatitis E virus (Cuevas-Ferrando et al, 2020; Miura et al, 2016), and poliovirus during the global eradication programme (Asghar et al, 2014).…”