Detection of enteroviruses and hepatitis a virus in water by consensus primer multiplex RT-PCR

A narrative review of wastewater surveillance: pathogens of concern, applications, detection methods, and challenges

Introduction

The emergence and resurgence of pathogens have led to significant global health challenges. Wastewater surveillance has historically been used to track water-borne or fecal-orally transmitted pathogens, providing a sensitive means of monitoring pathogens within a community. This technique offers a comprehensive, real-time, and cost-effective approach to disease surveillance, especially for diseases that are difficult to monitor through individual clinical screenings.

Methods

This narrative review examines the current state of knowledge on wastewater surveillance, emphasizing important findings and techniques used to detect potential pathogens from wastewater. It includes a review of literature on the detection methods, the pathogens of concern, and the challenges faced in the surveillance process.

Results

Wastewater surveillance has proven to be a powerful tool for early warning and timely intervention of infectious diseases. It can detect pathogens shed by asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals, providing an accurate population-level view of disease transmission. The review highlights the applications of wastewater surveillance in tracking key pathogens of concern, such as gastrointestinal pathogens, respiratory pathogens, and viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

Discussion

The review discusses the benefits of wastewater surveillance in public health, particularly its role in enhancing existing systems for infectious disease surveillance. It also addresses the challenges faced, such as the need for improved detection methods and the management of antimicrobial resistance. The potential for wastewater surveillance to inform public health mitigation strategies and outbreak response protocols is emphasized.

Conclusion

Wastewater surveillance is a valuable tool in the fight against infectious diseases. It offers a unique perspective on the spread and evolution of pathogens, aiding in the prevention and control of disease epidemics. This review underscores the importance of continued research and development in this field to overcome current challenges and maximize the potential of wastewater surveillance in public health.

Recent advances in biosensors for detecting viruses in water and wastewater

As there is a considerable number of virus particles in wastewater which cause numerous infectious diseases, it is necessary to eliminate viruses from domestic wastewater before it is released in the environment. In addition, on-site detection of viruses in wastewater can provide information on possible virus exposures in the community of a given wastewater catchment. For this purpose, the pre-detection of different strains of viruses in wastewaters is an essential environmental step. Epidemiological studies illustrate that viruses are the most challenging pathogens to be detected in water samples because of their nano sizes, discrete distribution, and low infective doses. Over the past decades, several methods have been applied for the detection of waterborne viruses which include polymerase chain reaction-based methods (PCR), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA). Although they have shown acceptable performance in virus measurements, their drawbacks such as complicated and time-consuming procedures, low sensitivity, and high analytical cost call for alternatives. Although biosensors are still in an early stage for practical applications, they have shown great potential to become an alternative means for virus detection in water and wastewater. This comprehensive review addresses the different types of viruses found in water and the recent development of biosensors for detecting waterborne viruses.

Review on the contamination of wastewater by COVID-19 virus: Impact and treatment

Emerging viruses are a major public health problem. Most zoonotic pathogens originate in wildlife, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), influenza, Ebola, and coronavirus. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory illness caused by a coronavirus called SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV). Viruses are charged colloidal particles that have the ability to adsorb on surfaces depending on pH. Their sorptive interaction with solid particles has important implications for their behavior in aquatic environments, soils, sewage sludge, and other solid materials and their removal or concentration by water treatment processes. Current state of knowledge on the potential of wastewater surveillance to understand the COVID-19 pandemic is reviewed. This study also identified wastewater irrigation systems with a higher risk of COVID-19 transmission. Emphasis was placed on methodologies for the detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater.

Insights from a Systematic Search for Information on Designs, Costs, and Effectiveness of Poliovirus Environmental Surveillance Systems

Poliovirus surveillance plays a critical role in achieving and certifying eradication and will play a key role in the polio endgame. Environmental surveillance can provide an opportunity to detect circulating polioviruses prior to the observation of any acute flaccid paralysis cases. We completed a systematic review of peer-reviewed publications on environmental surveillance for polio including the search terms "environmental surveillance" or "sewage," and "polio," "poliovirus," or "poliomyelitis," and compared characteristics of the resulting studies. The review included 146 studies representing 101 environmental surveillance activities from 48 countries published between 1975 and 2016. Studies reported taking samples from sewage treatment facilities, surface waters, and various other environmental sources, although they generally did not present sufficient details to thoroughly evaluate the sewage systems and catchment areas. When reported, catchment areas varied from 50 to over 7.3 million people (median of 500,000 for the 25% of activities that reported catchment areas, notably with 60% of the studies not reporting this information and 16% reporting insufficient information to estimate the catchment area population size). While numerous studies reported the ability of environmental surveillance to detect polioviruses in the absence of clinical cases, the review revealed very limited information about the costs and limited information to support quantitative population effectiveness of conducting environmental surveillance. This review motivates future studies to better characterize poliovirus environmental surveillance systems and the potential value of information that they may provide in the polio endgame.

Comparison of Two Concentration Methods for the Molecular Detection of Enteroviruses in Raw and Treated Sewage

Human enteric viruses are a major causative agent of emerging waterborne diseases and constitute a serious public health concern. Environmental contamination occurs through discharge of waste materials from infected persons. Methods for viral detection should be developed to detect low infective dose of enteric viruses in environment. In this study, we aimed at comparing two concentration methods for the detection of naturally occurring enteroviruses in raw and treated sewage. In the first method, polyethylene glycol is used to concentrate viral particles from the collected samples. The second method is based on ultracentrifugation of viral particles at high speed (110,000×g). Genomes of enteroviruses were quantified by the quantitative real-time PCR method in raw and treated sewage samples. PEG-based method yielded higher genomic copies of enteric viruses (with an average of 5.9 log10 genomic copies/100 mL) when applied to raw sewage samples. While the ultracentrifugation assay in the second method decreases genomic copies number (with an average of 5.4 log10 genomic copies/100 mL). The recovery differences between the two methods were not significant when applied to clean samples (treated sewage). This could be explained by the presence of inhibitors, which interfere with qRT-PCR, in less quantity comparatively to raw sewage. PEG-based method would be more accurate for samples with high-organic matter load. This report emphasizes the importance of matrices nature on the recovery of enteroviruses from sewage samples. This should be taken into consideration for establishing standardized virological assays to ensure the virological quality control of discharged water in environment.

Chapter 9 The Detection of Waterborne Viruses

Viruses in water are usually present in concentrations too low for detection by direct analysis. Virological investigation of water samples is always a multi-stage process involving concentration of viruses present followed by an appropriate detection procedure. There are several approaches to detection of viruses. Part or all of the concentrate may be inoculated into cell cultures to detect infectious cytopathogenic virus, and if this is done in a quantitative fashion the virus can be enumerated, the count being reported as plaque-forming units, the tissue culture infectious dose, or most probable number units. The virus may be isolated and identified from the cell cultures. Viruses that multiply without producing an identifiable cytopathic effect in culture may sometimes be detected by immunoperoxidase or immunofluorescence staining. The concentrate may also be analyzed by molecular biological procedures (usually polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or real-time-PCR). The problem then is that such techniques do not usually detect the infectious virus, and novel approaches have been made recently to meet this challenge.

Rapid detection of enteroviruses in small volumes of natural waters by real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR

Despite viral contamination of recreational waters, only bacterial, not viral, indicators are monitored routinely, due to a lack of rapid and cost-effective assays. We used negatively charged filters to capture enteroviruses from seawater and freshwater. Viral RNA was extracted using a commercial kit, and the viruses were quantified by real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR). Poliovirus (6.6 to 330,000 virus particles/ml) was added to samples from watersheds in Los Angeles, California, and analysis showed that with 50-ml samples, a cellulose acetate/nitrate (HA) filter yielded final recovery of 51% (r2= 0.99) in fresh water and 23% (r2= 0.90) in seawater. However, for additions of low levels of virus (more likely to represent field samples; <10(4) enterovirus particles/ml), the recovery was lower and more variable, with HA being best in freshwater (17%, r2= 0.97) and the type GF/F glass filter having higher average recovery in seawater (GF/F, 17%; r2= 0.93; HA 12%, r2= 0.87). The optimized method was used with 1-liter field samples from two very different freshwater "creeks" that drain into Santa Monica Bay, California: Topanga Creek (TC), a relatively pristine mountain creek, and Ballona Creek (BC), a concrete-lined urban storm drain. One TC site out of 10 and 2 BC sites out of 7 tested significantly positive for enteroviruses, with higher enterovirus concentrations in BC than in TC (ca. 10 to 25 versus 1 equivalent enterovirus particle/ml). The presented filtration-qRT-PCR approach is fast (<8 h from sampling to results), sensitive, and cost efficient and is promising for monitoring viral contamination in environmental water samples.

Concentration and detection of SARS coronavirus in sewage from Xiao Tang Shan Hospital and the 309th Hospital

The transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) is associated with close contact to SARS patients and droplet secretions of those patients. The finding of positive RT-PCR results from stools of SARS patients suggests that stools of SARS patients or sewage containing stools of patients could transmit SARS-CoV. We used a novel style of electropositive filter media particle to concentrate the SARS-CoV from the sewage of two hospitals receiving SARS patients in Beijing. We also used cell culture, RT-PCR and gene sequencing to detect and identify the viruses from sewage. No infectious SARS-CoV contamination was found in any of the samples collected, but the nucleic acid of SARS-CoV could be detected in the sewage from the two hospitals before disinfection. While the RNA was only detected in three samples from the 309th Hospital, the others were negative after disinfection. These findings provide strong evidence that SARS-CoV can be excreted through the stool/urine of patients into sewage system, thus making the sewage system a possible route of transmission.

A role for arrays in clinical virology: fact or fiction?

Microarrays of DNA probes have at least three roles in clinical virology. These are: firstly, in diagnosis, to recognise the causative agent of an illness; secondly, for molecular typing for (i) patient management, (ii) epidemiological reasons (e.g. investigating routes of transmission), (iii) purposes related to vaccine use; and thirdly, in research, to investigate the interactions between the virus and the host cell. Microarrays intended for syndromic diagnostic purposes require genome specific probes to capture the unknown target viral sequences and thereby reveal the presence of that virus in a test sample. Microarrays intended for typing and patient management, e.g. monitoring antiviral drug resistant mutations require a set of probes representing the important sequence variants of one or more viral genes. Microarrays intended for research into virus–host interactions require probes representative of each individual gene or mRNA of either the virus or the host genome. Diagnostic microarrays are dependent for their utility and versatility on generic, multiplex or random polymerase chain reactions that will amplify any of several (unknown) viral target sequences from a patient sample. In this review, the existing and potential applications of microarrays in virology, and the problems that need to be overcome for future success, are discussed.