Wastewater surveillance for bacterial targets: current challenges and future goals

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  • Philo, Sarah E.
    • Other Affiliation: University of Notre Dame
  • De León, Kara B.
    • Other Affiliation: University of Oklahoma
  • Noble, Rachel T.
    • Affiliation: Institute of Marine Sciences
  • Zhou, Nicolette A.
    • Other Affiliation: University of Washington
  • Alghafri, Rashed
    • Other Affiliation: Dubai Police
  • Bar-Or, Itay
    • Other Affiliation: Israel Ministry of Health
  • Darling, Amanda
    • Other Affiliation: Virginia Tech
  • D'Souza, Nishita
    • Other Affiliation: Michigan State University
  • Hachimi, Oumaima
    • Other Affiliation: Oregon State University
  • Kaya, Devrim
    • Other Affiliation: San Diego State University
  • Kim, Sooyeol
    • Other Affiliation: University of California Berkeley
  • Gaardbo Kuhn, Katrin
    • Other Affiliation: University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
  • Layton, Blythe A.
    • Other Affiliation: Clean Water Services
  • Mansfeldt, Cresten
    • Other Affiliation: University of Colorado Boulder
  • Oceguera, Bethany
    • Other Affiliation: University of Notre Dame
  • Radniecki, Tyler S.
    • Other Affiliation: Oregon State University
  • Ram, Jeffrey L.
    • Other Affiliation: Wayne State University School of Medicine
  • Saunders, Lauren P.
    • Other Affiliation: Ceres Nanosciences
  • Shrestha, Abhilasha
    • Other Affiliation: University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health
  • Stadler, Lauren B.
    • Other Affiliation: Rice University
  • Steele, Joshua A.
    • Other Affiliation: Southern California Coastal Research Project
  • Stevenson, Bradley S.
    • Other Affiliation: Northwestern University
  • Bibby, Kyle
    • Other Affiliation: University of Notre Dame
  • Boehm, Alexandria B.
    • Other Affiliation: Stanford University
  • Halden, Rolf U.
    • Other Affiliation: Arizona State University
  • Delgado Vela, Jeseth
    • Other Affiliation: Duke University
Abstract
  • Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) expanded rapidly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the public health emergency has ended, researchers and practitioners are looking to shift the focus of existing wastewater surveillance programs to other targets, including bacteria. Bacterial targets may pose some unique challenges for WBE applications. To explore the current state of the field, the National Science Foundation-funded Research Coordination Network (RCN) on Wastewater Based Epidemiology for SARS-CoV-2 and Emerging Public Health Threats held a workshop in April 2023 to discuss the challenges and needs for wastewater bacterial surveillance. The targets and methods used in existing programs were diverse, with twelve differentdifferentdifferenttargets and nine different methods listed. Discussions during the workshop highlighted the challenges in adapting existing programs and identified research gaps in four key areas: choosing new targets, relating bacterial wastewater data to human disease incidence and prevalence, developing methods, and normalizing results. To help with these challenges and research gaps, the authors identified steps the larger community can take to improve bacteria wastewater surveillance. This includes developing data reporting standards and method optimization and validation for bacterial programs. Additionally, more work is needed to understand shedding patterns for potential bacterial targets to better relate wastewater data to human infections. Wastewater surveillance for bacteria can help provide insight into the underlying prevalence in communities, but much work is needed to establish these methods.
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  • Article
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  • In Copyright
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  • Attribution 4.0 International
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  • Applied and Environmental Microbiology
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  • e01428-23
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  • English
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