Sewage-based Epidemiology Requires a Truly Transdisciplinary Approach

Ort, Christoph; Banta‐Green, Caleb J.; Bijlsma, Lubertus; Castiglioni, Sara; Emke, Erik; Gartner, Coral; Kasprzyk-Hordern, Barbara; Reid, Malcolm J.; Rieckermann, Jörg; Nuijs, Alexander L.N. van

doi:10.14512/gaia.23.3.12

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Another challenge is that the uncertainty about the size of the population due to population fluctuation can cause problems in the monitoring of infectious diseases in wastewater because the presence of tourists or commuters in a catchment area may make it difficult to monitor the actual infectious diseases in the community [46]. For example, it is impossible to distinguish whether pathogens in wastewater originate from visitors passing through or from individuals within the community.…”

Section: Uncertainty About Population Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are several technologies that can be used to reduce sources of uncertainty related to population size, such as water chemistry parameters of mature analytical methods, which can help to estimate the population contributing to the catchment area of the wastewater collection points during a specific period of time [47,48]. However, the results are affected by the composition of wastewater, which leads to additional uncertainties related to these techniques, such as sample collection and analysis variability [46,49,50].…”

Section: Uncertainty About Population Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

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The potential of wastewater-based epidemiology as surveillance and early warning of infectious disease outbreaks

Mao

Zhang

et al. 2020

Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health

178

148

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Infectious diseases caused by pathogens have become one of the main threats to public health. Efficient monitoring of infectious disease transmission is critical to prevent and manage infectious disease epidemics. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is an efficient approach with great potential for early warning of infectious disease transmission and outbreaks. By analyzing infectious disease biomarkers in wastewater taken from wastewater collection points, the transmission of infectious diseases in certain areas can be comprehensively monitored in near real time. This short review presents WBE as a surveillance and early warning system for infectious disease outbreaks regarding pathogens with pandemic potential. We also discuss the challenges and perspective of WBE in infectious disease surveillance and early warning.

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Section: Uncertainty About Population Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Uncertainty About Population Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

The potential of wastewater-based epidemiology as surveillance and early warning of infectious disease outbreaks

Mao

Zhang

et al. 2020

Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health

178

148

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…And finally, indications that this field of research may be making progress in establishing its own niche include discussions in various review articles ( Eggimann et al, 2017 ; Fox et al, 2017 ; Gracia-Lor et al, 2017 ; Ort et al, 2013 ).…”

Section: Update On Published Advancements Relevant To Bioscimmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring wastewater for assessing community health: Sewage Chemical-Information Mining (SCIM)

Daughton

2018

Science of The Total Environment

158

118

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Timely assessment of the aggregate health of small-area human populations is essential for guiding the optimal investment of resources needed for preventing, avoiding, controlling, or mitigating human exposure risks, as well as for maintaining or promoting health. Seeking those interventions yielding the greatest benefit with respect to the allocation of resources is critical for making progress toward community sustainability, reducing health disparities, promoting social justice, and maintaining or improving collective health and well-being. More informative, faster, and less-costly approaches are needed for guiding investigation of cause-effect linkages involving communities and stressors originating from both the built and natural environments. One such emerging approach involves the continuous monitoring of sewage for chemicals that serve as indicators of the collective status of human health (or stress/disease) or any other facet relevant to gauging time-trends in community-wide health. This nascent approach can be referred to as Sewage Chemical-Information Mining (SCIM) and involves the monitoring of sewage for the information that resides in the form of natural and anthropogenic chemicals that enter sewers as a result of the everyday actions, activities, and behaviors of humans. Of particular interest is a specific embodiment of SCIM that would entail the targeted monitoring of a broad suite of endogenous biomarkers of key physiologic processes (as opposed to xenobiotics or their metabolites). This application is termed BioSCIM—an approach roughly analogous to a hypothetical community-wide collective clinical urinalysis, or to a hypothetical en masse human biomonitoring program. BioSCIM would be used for gauging the status or time-trends in community-wide health on a continuous basis. This paper presents an update on the progress made with the development of the BioSCIM concept in the period of time since its original publication in 2012, as well as the next steps required for its continued development.

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“…Theoretically, such biomarkers could serve as collective measures of community‐wide health or disease, and could provide a means to conduct epidemiology in near‐real time. It has, therefore, the capability to serve as an early‐warning system in pandemics (Ort et al, ). Quantitative analysis of “health biomarkers” in sewage might allow one to monitor changes over time; for example, in response to specific campaigns, identification of trends and, inter‐community comparisons in relation to their health, diet, lifestyle, and environment (Thomas & Reid, ). It is essential to widen the knowledge on selection of the most‐appropriate IDB in WBE and to take into account specific requirements that a proper biomarker should fulfil in order to ensure the reliability of the back‐calculated estimates.…”

Section: General Summary and Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several crucial steps are involved in this approach (Fig. ), which requires significant expertise from numerous research fields, and therefore, strong multi‐disciplinary collaboration (Ort et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mass spectrometric strategies for the investigation of biomarkers of illicit drug use in wastewater

Hernández

Castiglioni

Covaci

et al. 2016

Mass Spectrometry Reviews

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102

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The analysis of illicit drugs in urban wastewater is the basis of wastewater‐based epidemiology (WBE), and has received much scientific attention because the concentrations measured can be used as a new non‐intrusive tool to provide evidence‐based and real‐time estimates of community‐wide drug consumption. Moreover, WBE allows monitoring patterns and spatial and temporal trends of drug use. Although information and expertise from other disciplines is required to refine and effectively apply WBE, analytical chemistry is the fundamental driver in this field. The use of advanced analytical techniques, commonly based on combined chromatography—mass spectrometry, is mandatory because the very low analyte concentration and the complexity of samples (raw wastewater) make quantification and identification/confirmation of illicit drug biomarkers (IDBs) troublesome. We review the most‐recent literature available (mostly from the last 5 years) on the determination of IDBs in wastewater with particular emphasis on the different analytical strategies applied. The predominance of liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry to quantify target IDBs and the essence to produce reliable and comparable results is illustrated. Accordingly, the importance to perform inter‐laboratory exercises and the need to analyze appropriate quality controls in each sample sequence is highlighted. Other crucial steps in WBE, such as sample collection and sample pre‐treatment, are briefly and carefully discussed. The article further focuses on the potential of high‐resolution mass spectrometry. Different approaches for target and non‐target analysis are discussed, and the interest to perform experiments under laboratory‐controlled conditions, as a complementary tool to investigate related compounds (e.g., minor metabolites and/or transformation products in wastewater) is treated. The article ends up with the trends and future perspectives in this field from the authors’ point of view. © 2016 by The Authors. Mass Spectrometry Reviews published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Mass Spec Rev 37:258–280, 2018

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Sewage-based Epidemiology Requires a Truly Transdisciplinary Approach

Cited by 15 publications

References 18 publications

The potential of wastewater-based epidemiology as surveillance and early warning of infectious disease outbreaks

The potential of wastewater-based epidemiology as surveillance and early warning of infectious disease outbreaks

Monitoring wastewater for assessing community health: Sewage Chemical-Information Mining (SCIM)

Mass spectrometric strategies for the investigation of biomarkers of illicit drug use in wastewater

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