Detection and diversity of human enteroviruses from domestic sewage in Weishan Lake region, eastern China, 2018-2019.

AIMS

Next generation sequencing (NGS) technology has been widely used in monitoring and identifying microbiomes in sewage. We aimed to evaluate the ability of NGS analysis in directly detecting enterovirus (EV) in sewage and to understand the diversity of EVs circulated in the residents in Weishan Lake region.

METHODS AND RESULTS

Fourteen sewage samples were collected in Jining, Shandong Province, China from 2018 to 2019 and were parallelly investigated by the P1 amplicon-based NGS method and cell culture method. The results showed that 20 different serotypes belonging to species Enterovirus A (EV-A) (n = 5), EV-B (n = 13), and EV-C (n = 2) were identified by NGS in the sewage concentrates, which exceeded the number of types detected by cell culture method (n = 9). Echovirus 11 (E11), Coxsackievirus (CV) B5 and CVA9 were the most detected types in those sewage concentrates. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that E11 sequences obtained in this study belonged to genogroup D5 and had close genetic relationship with clinical sequences.

CONCLUSIONS

Various EV serotypes circulated in populations near Weishan Lake. The combination of NGS technology into environmental surveillance will greatly contribute to improving our knowledge about EV circulation patterns in the population.