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Wastewater surveillance for infectious disease preparednessThe University of Oklahoma Wastewater Based Epidemiology (OU WBE) team highlights successes from their three years of wastewater surveillance in Oklahoma & how this surveillance approach can be used as next-level monitoring for infectious disease preparedness. The OU WBE team, founded by Bradley Stevenson, Jason Vogel, and Katrin Gaardbo Kuhn in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Summer 2020, has expanded to one of the most extensive wastewater monitoring networks in the world with a team that has included over 50 faculty, students and staff. In a paper published in 1942, Drs. James Trask and John Paul described a study to detect poliovirus in wastewater samples collected in New York and New Haven. They concluded, “It is likely that the periodic sampling of sewage for pathogenic viruses or bacteria may be a method of epidemiological value”. (1) Since then, wastewater surveillance has been used to detect sporadic outbreaks or clusters of various infectious pathogens, reaching new levels of routine utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic.(2)
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Using Wastewater Surveillance to Monitor Gastrointestinal Pathogen Infections in the State of Oklahoma
During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater surveillance was widely used to monitor temporal and geographical infection trends. Using this as a foundation, a statewide program for routine wastewater monitoring of gastrointestinal pathogens was established in Oklahoma. The results from 18 months of surveillance showed that wastewater concentrations of Salmonella, Campylobacter, and norovirus exhibit similar seasonal patterns to those observed in reported human cases (F = 4–29, p < 0.05) and that wastewater can serve as an early warning tool for increases in cases, offering between one- and two-weeks lead time. Approximately one third of outbreak alerts in wastewater correlated in time with confirmed outbreaks of Salmonella or Campylobacter and our results further indicated that several outbreaks are likely to go undetected through the traditional surveillance approach currently in place. Better understanding of the true distribution and burden of gastrointestinal infections ultimately facilitates better disease prevention and control and reduces the overall socioeconomic and healthcare related impact of these pathogens. In this respect, wastewater represents a unique opportunity for monitoring infections in real-time, without the need for individual human testing. With increasing demands for sustainable and low-cost disease surveillance, the usefulness of wastewater as a long-term method for tracking infectious disease transmission is likely to become even more pronounced.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2200299
- PAR ID:
- 10586131
- Publisher / Repository:
- Microorganisms 2023
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Microorganisms
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 2076-2607
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2193
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms11092193
