In a recent research report from the United States, currently available on bioRxiv* preprint server, scientists have shown that bacterial taxonomic and functional profiles can discriminate severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) status even without directly detecting viral transcripts – opening the door for entirely novel approaches in wastewater-based epidemiology.
Wastewater-based epidemiology for tracking diseases represents a concept that is becoming more pervasive in recent years due to many advantages compared to traditional approaches, as it can provide particularly comprehensive information on different communities.
One significant advantage is that it is non-invasive and cost-effective when compared to individual clinical testing. Furthermore, it does not necessitate individual consent to clinical testing in order to report the results to public health agencies thus it can be highly beneficial to under-served populations.
Nonetheless, at the moment, the wastewater-based epidemiology scheme is limited to pathogen detection and characterization by using real-time PCR and sequencing methods, which means it cannot detect disease agents for which a screening test has not been developed.
Recent studies that have used a highly spatially resolved, high-throughput wastewater monitoring system on a college campus showed that it was possible to collect and characterize thousands of wastewater samples with real-time PCR, identifying 85% of clinical cases caused by SARS-CoV-2, and also enable genomic surveillance for emerging variants of concern by complete genome sequencing.
In this research paper, a research group led by Dr. Rodolfo A Salido and Dr. Rob Knight from the University of California San Diego in La Jolla (USA) used a metatranscriptomics approach for an untargeted community/population-level disease monitoring strategy.
