Faculty of Science, The University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada L1G 0C5.
Environ Sci Technol. 2022 Apr 19;56(8):5062-5070. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.1c04705. Epub 2022 Mar 29.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed the health system worldwide, and there was a need to track outbreaks and try to use this information as an early warning system. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) enabled detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater treatment plant influents. Until now, the most used technique for this detection has been the quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-based quantification of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. This study proposes a mass spectrometry (MS)-based method that detected specific SARS-CoV-2 proteins in wastewater, 5 and 6 days ahead of the case data for two municipalities. We identified unique peptides of eight proteins related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 infection. We detected the nonstructural protein (NSP) pp1ab (transcribed after host cell infection) most frequently in all of the samples. As a result, we suspect that in the active cases of COVID-19, the pp1ab protein is present in high abundance in the urine and feces and that this protein could be used as an alternative biomarker. These data were collected before mass vaccination occurred in the population.
最近的 COVID-19 大流行使全球卫生系统不堪重负，因此需要跟踪疫情并尝试将这些信息用作预警系统。基于废水的流行病学（WBE）使人们能够在污水处理厂的进水口检测到 SARS-CoV-2 病毒。到目前为止，用于这种检测的最常用技术是基于定量聚合酶链反应（qPCR）的 SARS-CoV-2 RNA 定量。本研究提出了一种基于质谱（MS）的方法，该方法可以在两个直辖市的病例数据之前 5 天和 6 天检测废水中的 SARS-CoV-2 特异性蛋白。我们鉴定了与 SARS-CoV-2 病毒和 COVID-19 感染相关的八种蛋白质的独特肽。我们在所有样本中最频繁地检测到非结构蛋白（NSP）pp1ab（在宿主细胞感染后转录）。因此，我们怀疑在 COVID-19 的活跃病例中，pp1ab 蛋白在尿液和粪便中大量存在，并且该蛋白可以用作替代生物标志物。这些数据是在人群大规模接种疫苗之前收集的。
