Environmental Surveillance of Poliovirus in Sewage Water around the Introduction Period for Inactivated Polio Vaccine in Japan

Abstract

Environmental virus surveillance was conducted at two independent sewage plants from urban and rural areas in the northern prefecture of the Kyushu district, Japan, to trace polioviruses (PVs) within communities. Consequently, 83 PVs were isolated over a 34-month period from April 2010 to January 2013. The frequency of PV isolation at the urban plant was 1.5 times higher than that at the rural plant. Molecular sequence analysis of the viral VP1 gene identified all three serotypes among the PV isolates, with the most prevalent serotype being type 2 (46%). Nearly all poliovirus isolates exhibited more than one nucleotide mutation from the Sabin vaccine strains. During this study, inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) was introduced for routine immunization on 1 September 2012, replacing the live oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV). Interestingly, the frequency of PV isolation from sewage waters declined before OPV cessation at both sites. Our study highlights the importance of environmental surveillance for the detection of the excretion of PVs from an OPV-immunized population in a highly sensitive manner, during the OPV-to-IPV transition period.

The Evolutionary Pathway to Virulence of an RNA Virus

“…In particular, the gate-keeper transition mutations appear to endow the highest initial fitness, which drives them to rapid fixation from absent or extremely low levels present in the vaccine stock (Neverov and Chumakov, 2010). This is supported by the fact that all three mutations are already present in viruses excreted by vaccinees 14 days after vaccination, and have been observed previously in viruses from primary vaccinees or in sewage surveillance (Dedepsidis et al, 2006; Macadam et al, 1991; Nakamura et al, 2015). Following this, we propose that replication becomes more efficient, allowing a larger viral population size, which increases the probability of transmission, co-infection and recombination with prevalent HEV-C strains (Jegouic et al, 2009).…”

Feasibility of the Bag-Mediated Filtration System for Environmental Surveillance of Poliovirus in Kenya

“…The frequency of SL2 detection in both BMFS and twophase samples can provide an important baseline to compare SL2 prevalence and persistence after the switch from trivalent OPV to bivalent OPV. The frequency of SL2 detection was comparable to other settings (Esteves-Jaramillo et al 2014;Nakamura et al 2015;Wahjuhono et al 2014;Wang et al 2014). This may be due to the high rate of PV2 shedding (88%), compared to PV1 (42%) and PV3 (58%) shedding 1 week after OPV use (Laassri et al 2005) as demonstrated by frequent PV2 detection within 3 weeks after OPV use (n = 10) compared to prior to OPV use (n = 32) (SL1: 40% vs. 38%, SL2: 90% vs. 84%, and SL3: 60% vs. 59% in BMFS and two-phase samples, respectively).…”

Detection of poliovirus infection in children with acute gastroenteritis in Chiang Mai, Thailand

“…As one of the virus that is generally transmitted by the fecal‐oral route, PV surveillance in the stool specimens cannot be ignored. Some of environmental surveillances of PV in water and sewage have been described previously in Brazil, Israel, Japan, Poland, Spain, and USA [Bosch et al, ; Sinclair et al, ; Nakamura et al, ; de et al, ; Fout et al, ] and the detection rates of PV varied from 2.0% to 5.7%. The prevalence of PV in environmental water in Thailand was comparable to that obtained in other countries at 2.0% [Kittigul et al, ; Tansuphasiri et al, ].…”

“…On the other hand, environmental surveillance of PV is an additional choice for monitoring PV strains circulating in the population [Kuryk et al, ]. Epidemiological study of PV infection has been focused mainly on the AFP cases and only few studies have been investigated for the PV in environmental sources [Kittigul et al, ; Tansuphasiri et al, ; Bosch et al, ; Sinclair et al, ; Kuryk et al, ; Nakamura et al, ; de et al, ; Fout et al, ]. In Thailand, only few reports of PV detection in environmental water and sewage have been described [Kittigul et al, ; Tansuphasiri et al, ] and there is no data available for PV surveillance in children with diarrhea.…”