Monitoring of illicit drug consumption via wastewater: development, challenges, and future aspects

Mercan, Selda; Kuloğlu, Merve; Aşıcıoğlu, Faruk

doi:10.1016/j.coesh.2019.05.002

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…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 Pic o, 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-Bell on 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).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2020

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Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused more than 200,000 reported COVID-19 cases in Spain resulting in more than 20,800 deaths as of April 21, 2020. Faecal shedding of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from COVID-19 patients has extensively been reported. Therefore, we investigated the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in six wastewater treatments plants (WWTPs) serving the major municipalities within the Region of Murcia (Spain), the area with the lowest COVID-19 prevalence within Iberian Peninsula. Firstly, an aluminum hydroxide adsorption-precipitation concentration method was validated using a porcine coronavirus (Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus, PEDV) and mengovirus (MgV). The procedure resulted in average recoveries of 10 ± 3.5% and 10 ± 2.1% in influent water (n ¼ 2) and 3.3 ± 1.6% and 6.2 ± 1.0% in effluent water (n ¼ 2) samples for PEDV and MgV, respectively. Then, the method was used to monitor the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 from March 12 to April 14, 2020 in influent, secondary and tertiary effluent water samples. By using the real-time RT-PCR (RT-qPCR) Diagnostic Panel validated by US CDC that targets three regions of the virus nucleocapsid (N) gene, we estimated quantification of SARS-CoV-2 RNA titers in untreated wastewater samples of 5.4 ± 0.2 log 10 genomic copies/L on average. Two secondary water samples resulted positive (2 out of 18) and all tertiary water samples tested as negative (0 out 12). This environmental surveillance data were compared to declared COVID-19 cases at municipality level, revealing that members of the community were shedding SARS-CoV-2 RNA in their stool even before the first cases were reported by local or national authorities in many of the cities where wastewaters have been sampled. The detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater in early stages of the spread of COVID-19 highlights the relevance of this strategy as an early indicator of the infection within a specific population. At this point, this environmental surveillance could be implemented by municipalities right away as a tool, designed to help authorities to coordinate the exit strategy to gradually lift its coronavirus lockdown.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2020

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“…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).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Randazzo

Truchado

Cuevas-Ferrando

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…To date, wastewater monitoring has been implemented as a successful strategy to track other health-related chemical and biological biomarkers, for example, in relation to illicit drug consumption, pharmaceutical use/abuse, water pollution, and the occurrence of antimicrobial resistance genes [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Use of Untreated Wastewater for Assessing COVID-19 Trends in Southern Italy

Giglio

Triggiano

Apollonio

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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As a complement to clinical disease surveillance, the monitoring of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in wastewater can be used as an early warning system for impending epidemics. This study investigated the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in untreated wastewater with respect to the trend of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevalence in Southern Italy. A total of 210 wastewater samples were collected between May and November 2020 from 15 Apulian wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). The samples were concentrated in accordance with the standard of World Health Organization (WHO, Geneva, Switzerland) procedure for Poliovirus sewage surveillance, and molecular analysis was undertaken with real-time reverse-transcription quantitative PCR (RT-(q) PCR). Viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) was found in 12.4% (26/210) of the samples. The virus concentration in the positive samples ranged from 8.8 × 102 to 6.5 × 104 genome copies/L. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve modeling showed that at least 11 cases/100,000 inhabitants would occur after a wastewater sample was found to be positive for SARS-CoV-2 (sensitivity = 80%, specificity = 80.9%). To our knowledge, this is the first study in Italy that has applied wastewater-based epidemiology to predict COVID-19 prevalence. Further studies regarding methods that include all variables (meteorological phenomena, characteristics of the WWTP, etc.) affecting this type of wastewater surveillance data would be useful to improve data interpretation.

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Monitoring of illicit drug consumption via wastewater: development, challenges, and future aspects

Cited by 18 publications

References 55 publications

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

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

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

Potential Use of Untreated Wastewater for Assessing COVID-19 Trends in Southern Italy

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