Search results for "Wastewater-based epidemiology"
showing 10 items of 15 documents
Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry as a tool for wastewater-based epidemiology: Assessing new psychoactive substances and other human biomarkers
2017
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) started to develop significantly in the last 8 years due, in part, to the advance of liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS). Its initial objective ― to estimate the consumption of illicit drugs ― has been expanded to new psychoactive substances (NPS) and other human biomarkers of health, lifestyle and disease. The purpose of this review is to introduce recent methods and outstanding challenges in the application of LC–MS to these new targets, including target, suspect and non-target screening and, outline the workflows developed for discovering metabolites of NPS and biomarkers. Further, we discuss a number of specific methodological challenges t…
The embodiment of wastewater data for the estimation of illicit drug consumption in Spain
2021
Data obtained from wastewater analysis can provide rapid and complementary insights in illicit drug consumption at community level. Within Europe, Spain is an important country of transit of both cocaine and cannabis. The quantity of seized drugs and prevalence of their use rank Spain at the top of Europe. Hence, the implementation of a wastewater monitoring program at national level would help to get better understanding of spatial differences and trends in use of illicit drugs. In this study, a national wastewater campaign was performed for the first time to get more insight on the consumption of illicit drugs within Spain. The 13 Spanish cities monitored cover approximately 6 million inh…
Estimating population size in wastewater-based epidemiology. Valencia metropolitan area as a case study.
2017
Wastewater can provide a wealth of epidemiologic data on common drugs consumed and on health and nutritional problems based on the biomarkers excreted into community sewage systems. One of the biggest uncertainties of these studies is the estimation of the number of inhabitants served by the treatment plants. Twelve human urine biomarkers —5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), acesulfame, atenolol, caffeine, carbamazepine, codeine, cotinine, creatinine, hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ), naproxen, salicylic acid (SA) and hydroxycotinine (OHCOT)— were determined by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) to estimate population size. The results reveal that populations calculated fr…
Comparing analytical methods to detect SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater
2021
Wastewater based epidemiology (WBE) has emerged as a reliable strategy to assess the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Recent publications suggest that SARS-CoV-2 detection in wastewater is technically feasible; however, many different protocols are available and most of the methods applied have not been properly validated. To this end, different procedures to concentrate and extract inactivated SARS-CoV-2 and surrogates were initially evaluated. Urban wastewater seeded with gamma-irradiated SARS-CoV-2, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), and mengovirus (MgV) was used to test the concentration efficiency of an aluminum-based adsorption-precipitation method and a polyethylene…
Assessing population exposure to phthalate plasticizers in thirteen Spanish cities through the analysis of wastewater
2021
Phthalates are widely used plasticizers that produce endocrine-disrupting disorders. Quantifying exposure is crucial to perform risk assessments and to develop proper health measures. Herein, a wastewater-based epidemiology approach has been applied to estimate human exposure to six of the mostly used phthalates within the Spanish population. Wastewater samples were collected over four weekdays from seventeen wastewater treatment plants serving thirteen cities and ca. 6 million people (12.8 % of the Spanish population). Phthalate metabolite loads in wastewater were transformed into metabolite concentrations in urine and into daily exposure levels to the parent phthalates. Considering all th…
Evaluation of two different concentration methods for surveillance of human viruses in sewage and their effects on SARS-CoV-2 sequencing
2022
8 páginas, 5 figuras, 1 tabla
A comprehensive one-year correlation analysis between prevalence and number of sars-cov-2 rna copies detected in wastewater from 8 sicilian cities in…
2023
Background and objectives: Several authors have reported positive correlations between wastewater SARS-CoV-2 concentrations and the community’s burden of infection, providing information about the disease’s epidemiological trend. This pre-post study evaluated – within a year of active surveillance, from October 1st,2021, to September 30th, 2022 – the relation between daily SARSCoV-2 prevalence and the number of genome copies/L detected in West Sicily wastewater samples. This study is part of a national framework coordinated by Istituto Superiore di Sanità. Methods: Quantitative data from analysing 486 wastewater samples collected from 9 purification plants in 8 Sicilian cities (Agrigento, B…
The rapid spread of SARS-COV-2 Omicron variant in Italy reflected early through wastewater surveillance
2022
The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant emerged in South Africa in November 2021, and has later been identified worldwide, raising serious concerns. A real-time RT-PCR assay was designed for the rapid screening of the Omicron variant, targeting characteristic mutations of the spike gene. The assay was used to test 737 sewage samples collected throughout Italy (19/21 Regions) between 11 November and 25 December 2021, with the aim of assessing the spread of the Omicron variant in the country. Positive samples were also tested with a real-time RT-PCR developed by the European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), and through nested RT-PCR followed by Sanger sequencing. Overall, 115 samples tested po…
Spatio‐temporal assessment of illicit drug use at large scale : evidence from 7 years of international wastewater monitoring
2019
Background and aims Wastewater‐based epidemiology is an additional indicator of drug use that is gaining reliability to complement the current established panel of indicators. The aims of this study were to: (i) assess spatial and temporal trends of population‐normalized mass loads of benzoylecgonine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and 3,4‐methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in raw wastewater over 7 years (2011–17); (ii) address overall drug use by estimating the average number of combined doses consumed per day in each city; and (iii) compare these with existing prevalence and seizure data. Design Analysis of daily raw wastewater composite samples collected over 1 week per year from 2011 to…
Wastewater-Based Epidemiology as a Tool to Detect SARS-CoV-2 Circulation at the Community Level: Findings from a One-Year Wastewater Investigation Co…
2023
Wastewater-based epidemiology is a well-established tool for detecting and monitoring the spread of enteric pathogens and the use of illegal drugs in communities in real time. Since only a few studies in Italy have investigated the correlation between SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and the prevalence of COVID-19 cases from clinical testing, we conducted a one-year wastewater surveillance study in Sicily to correlate the load of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and the reported cumulative prevalence of COVID-19 in 14 cities from October 2021 to September 2022. Furthermore, we investigated the role of SARS-CoV-2 variants and subvariants in the increase in the number of SARS CoV-2 infections. Our findin…