Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Kuwait City, Kuwait.
Microbiotix, Inc., One Innovation Drive, Worcester, MA, 01605, USA.
Environ Monit Assess. 2023 Feb 16;195(3):406. doi: 10.1007/s10661-023-10986-4.
Effective surveillance for epidemic-prone viral diseases is essential for emergency preparedness to respond to threats and occurrences of pandemics. While it is difficult and expensive to conduct health facility-based surveillance, there is a growing interest in conducting sewage-based epidemiological studies to monitor the health of the urban population because of the relative ease of sample collection and the availability of advanced molecular techniques for the detection of pathogens in the sewage. Sewage samples offer unique means to study the aggregate health of the population as opposed to the monitoring of the health of any individual by traditional methods. We worked together with the Ministry of Public Works in Kuwait and developed a platform for the collection and testing of sewage samples from different regions of Kuwait for studying population health. In this report, we describe the results of a cross-sectional study conducted between 16 and 23 September 2019 in an attempt to detect influenza, Noro, Rota, hepatitis A, and hepatitis E viruses in urban sewage samples collected in Kuwait. All five targeted viruses were detected in the samples collected from urban wastewater in Kuwait using reverse-transcriptase quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). We recently checked for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the stored cDNA samples and confirmed the absence of SARS-CoV-2 in them. This is the first report that demonstrates the preparedness in Kuwait for using sewage samples for the detection and monitoring of many pathogenic viruses which may greatly increase the capacity of the country to deal with a viral disease outbreak in the future.
有效监测易发生流行的病毒性疾病对于应对大流行威胁和疫情爆发的应急准备至关重要。虽然在医疗机构进行监测既困难又昂贵，但由于样本采集相对容易，并且可以使用先进的分子技术在污水中检测病原体，因此越来越有兴趣开展基于污水的流行病学研究来监测城市人口的健康状况。污水样本提供了一种独特的方法，可以研究人群的总体健康状况，而不是通过传统方法监测任何个体的健康状况。我们与科威特公共工程部合作，开发了一个平台，用于收集和测试科威特不同地区的污水样本，以研究人口健康状况。在本报告中，我们描述了 2019 年 9 月 16 日至 23 日期间进行的一项横断面研究的结果，该研究试图在科威特收集的城市污水样本中检测流感、诺如、轮状、甲肝和戊肝病毒。使用逆转录实时定量 PCR（RT-qPCR）在从科威特城市废水中采集的样本中检测到了所有这 5 种目标病毒。我们最近检查了存储的 cDNA 样本中是否存在 SARS-CoV-2，并确认它们中不存在 SARS-CoV-2。这是第一个证明科威特已经准备好使用污水样本来检测和监测许多致病病毒的报告，这将极大地提高该国未来应对病毒性疾病爆发的能力。
