Researchers in Sweden have created a way that now makes it possible to watch sewage for a virus that has is believed to be linked to hepatitis outbreaks worldwide. First developed for the Covid-19 pandemic, the strategy could be adapted for a lot of viruses, including monkey pox, offering a useful addition to the general public health toolkit.

In a recent study conducted by researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, adenovirus F41 was detected in wastewater samples on the Swedish Environmental Epidemiology Center-KTH node in Stockholm. The outcomes were presented in September to the European Commission and Swedish authorities.

The F41 virus is thought for causing outbreaks of gastroenteritis in children—which generally causes diarrhea and vomiting—a condition parents often discuss with as “stomach flu.” But a recent outbreak within the U.S. suggested that F41 might also result in liver inflammation.

Several children in Alabama were hospitalized through the summer with hepatitis symptoms but they tested negative for hepatitis, while testing positive for F41. That outbreak led the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to start an investigation into the potential for a link between F41 and hepatitis A, B and C.

KTH researchers Zeynep Cetecioglu Gurol and Mariel Perez Zabaleta say that within the event of such outbreaks, the strategy might be utilized by public health authorities to trace the source. “If we all know the water system plan, we are able to collect wastewater samples close to colleges, hospitals or airports,” Cetecioglu Gurol says “Even when wastewater is mixed from multiple parts of a community, the samples are going to be more concentrated than the samples taken directly from the wastewater treatment plants.”

The researchers adapted a sampling technique that had first been created at KTH in 2020 to watch Covid-19 virus particles in wastewater collected at Stockholm’s sewage treatment facilities. Perez Zabaleta says the technique will also be used to detect not only F41 but monkey pox and seasonal viruses such influenza and norovirus.

She says the researchers at the moment are adapting their methods to detect the presence of antibiotic resistance via sewage samples.

Source:

KTH The Royal Institute of Technology