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. 2020 Oct 1:184:116160.
doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2020.116160. Epub 2020 Jul 7.

Identification of multiple potential viral diseases in a large urban center using wastewater surveillance

Camille McCall  1 , Huiyun Wu  1 , Brijen Miyani  1 , Irene Xagoraraki  2
Affiliations

Identification of multiple potential viral diseases in a large urban center using wastewater surveillance

Camille McCall et al. Water Res. .

Abstract

Viruses are linked to a multitude of human illnesses and can disseminate widely in urbanized environments causing global adverse impacts on communities and healthcare infrastructures. Wastewater-based epidemiology was employed using metagenomics and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assays to identify enteric and non-enteric viruses collected from a large urban area for potential public health monitoring and outbreak analysis. Untreated wastewater samples were collected from November 2017 to February 2018 (n = 54) to evaluate the diversity of human viral pathogens in collected samples. Viruses were classified into virus types based on primary transmission routes and reviewed against viral associated diseases reported in the catchment area. Metagenomics detected the presence of viral pathogens that cause clinically significant diseases reported within the study area during the sampling year. Detected viruses belong to the Adenoviridae, Astroviridae, Caliciviridae, Coronaviridae, Flaviviridae, Hepeviridae, Herpesviridae, Matonaviridae, Papillomaviridae, Parvoviridae, Picornaviridae, Poxviridae, Retroviridae, and Togaviridae families. Furthermore, concentrations of adenovirus, norovirus GII, sapovirus, hepatitis A virus, human herpesvirus 6, and human herpesvirus 8 were measured in wastewater samples and compared to metagenomic findings to confirm detected viral genus. Hepatitis A virus obtained the greatest average viral load (1.86 × 107 genome copies/L) in wastewater samples compared to other viruses quantified using qPCR with a 100% detection rate in metagenomic samples. Average concentration of sapovirus (1.36 × 106 genome copies/L) was significantly greater than norovirus GII (2.94 × 104 genome copies/L) indicating a higher burden within the study area. Findings obtained from this study aid in evaluating the utility of wastewater-based epidemiology for identification and routine monitoring of various viruses in large communities. This methodology has the potential to improve public health responses to large scale outbreaks and viral pandemics.

Keywords: Metagenomics; Public health; Viral diseases; Virus diversity; Wastewater-based epidemiology; qPCR.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image 1
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Metagenomic workflow for human virus identification in wastewater samples.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
ssRNA (a) and DNA (b) virus diversity and relative abundance in wastewater samples.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Principal component analysis (PCoA) of human viral pathogen presence. PCoA was produced in MEGAN at the family level using Bray-Curtis dissimilarity index.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
(a) Heatmap of human genus virus diversity and normalized abundance in each sample. White cells indicate absence of associated virus in related sample. Virus genera are in descending order according to abundance. Heatmap was produced in R. (b) Proportion of human virus types detected in wastewater samples.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Picornaviruses detected in wastewater samples.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Boxplot for select viral concentrations per sampling date.
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Temporal comparison of NoV GII and SaV concentrations in collected samples. Error bars represent standard error.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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