Squillacioti Giulia, El Sherbiny Samar, Affricano Alex, Richiardi Lisa, Cassardo Claudio, Baldelli Giulia, Medana Claudio, Brandi Giorgio, Bono Roberto
Department of Public Health and Pediatrics, University of Turin, Via Santena 5 bis, Turin, 10126, Italy.
Department of Nutrition, Food Sciences and Gastronomy, University of Barcelona, Av. Joan XXIII 27-31, Barcelona, 08028, Spain.
BMC Public Health. 2025 Jul 24;25(1):2543. doi: 10.1186/s12889-025-23774-1.
Wastewater-based Epidemiology (WBE) was initially employed as a valuable tool for monitoring pathogens. Nowadays, WBE has expanded its original focus to the quantification of several “community-level metabolism” indicators to complement Public Health monitoring campaigns. Recently, wastewater isoprostanes have been suggested as biological indicators of oxidative stress and community anxiety levels during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, previous studies were lacking of concomitant quantifications linking isoprostanes in sewage with COVID-19 pandemic indicators. This study provides an application case to expand the application of a WBE approach for the investigation of community-wide oxidative stress levels and COVID-19 disease. We quantified the occurrence of three oxidative stress biomarkers in wastewater samples collected from two Italian cities (study sites A and B) from January to December 2022. Among the selected oxidative stress biomarkers, only 8-isoprostaglandin F2α (8-iso-PGF2α) and 5-iso Prostaglandin F2α-VI (5-iPF2α-VI) were detectable, while prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) was undetectable during the entire study period in both sites. The annual trend of 8-iso-PGF2α mass load and SARS-CoV-2 concentration in sewage was significantly and moderately cross-correlated, as a at study site A (Spearman’s rho = 0.62) and study site B (Spearman’s rho = 0.68). The same findings were confirmed for the cross-correlations including 8-iso-PGF2α concentrations instead of per capita mass load. A moderate and significant cross-correlation with the annual trend of monthly average daily COVID-19 cases (Spearman’s rho = 0.67) was observed for one study site and with a time lag = 1. Our findings support the hypothesis that human biomonitoring, via the quantification of oxidative stress biomarkers in sewage, can be effectively used to investigate the emerging field of the community-level metabolism.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-025-23774-1.
基于废水的流行病学（WBE）最初被用作监测病原体的重要工具。如今，WBE已将其最初的重点扩展到对多个“社区水平代谢”指标的量化，以补充公共卫生监测活动。最近，废水异前列腺素被提议作为新冠疫情期间氧化应激和社区焦虑水平的生物学指标。然而，先前的研究缺乏将污水中的异前列腺素与新冠疫情指标联系起来的同步量化。本研究提供了一个应用案例，以扩展WBE方法在调查社区范围内氧化应激水平和新冠疾病方面的应用。我们对2022年1月至12月从意大利两个城市（研究地点A和B）采集的废水样本中三种氧化应激生物标志物的出现情况进行了量化。在选定的氧化应激生物标志物中，仅检测到8-异前列腺素F2α（8-iso-PGF2α）和5-异前列腺素F2α-VI（5-iPF2α-VI），而在两个地点的整个研究期间均未检测到前列腺素E2（PGE2）。污水中8-iso-PGF2α质量负荷和新冠病毒浓度的年度趋势显著且呈中度交叉相关，在研究地点A（斯皮尔曼相关系数ρ = 0.62）和研究地点B（斯皮尔曼相关系数ρ = 0.68）均如此。对于包括8-iso-PGF2α浓度而非人均质量负荷的交叉相关性，也得到了相同的结果。在一个研究地点观察到与每月平均每日新冠病例的年度趋势存在中度且显著的交叉相关性（斯皮尔曼相关系数ρ = 0.67），且时间滞后为1。我们的研究结果支持这样的假设，即通过量化污水中的氧化应激生物标志物进行人体生物监测可有效用于调查社区水平代谢这一新兴领域。
在线版本包含可在10.1186/s12889-025-23774-1获取的补充材料。
