(Press-News.org) HOUSTON - (March 22, 2021) - There are many ways to test municipal wastewater for signs of the virus that causes COVID-19, but scientists in Houston have determined theirs is the best yet.
A study led by environmental engineer Lauren Stadler of Rice University's Brown School of Engineering with the aid of the City of Houston Health Department and Baylor College of Medicine compared five processes used by labs around the country to concentrate samples and find the virus in wastewater from six Houston plants.
The process employed at Rice and now Baylor, called "electronegative filtration with bead beating," proved the most sensitive to signs of the virus as well as the most cost-effective.
The study appears in the Elsevier journal Water Research.
There is no standard test, according to the study, but all of the processes -- including electronegative filtration with elution, ultrafiltration, precipitation and direct extraction -- are effective to a degree.
"The virus is extremely dilute in wastewater, so we need a way to concentrate it," Stadler said in explaining the Rice process. "First, we add salt to the wastewater sample to enhance adsorption of the virus to the electronegative filter. After filtration, we physically beat the filter with glass beads to release the virus into a lysate. Even though this process might break up the virus, we only detect tiny fragments of its RNA genome to quantify it."
Established in spring 2020, the Houston coalition was on the leading edge of what became a nationwide effort to find the SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater. The technique quickly proved able to anticipate COVID-19 outbreaks and allowed health officials to ramp up testing where needed.
"When we started testing, Baylor was using a different method," Stadler said. "That gave us the opportunity to do a lot of head-to-head comparisons about which method to use. And that led us to want to do a more comprehensive evaluation of several methods that were commonly being used to concentrate SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater by other groups around the world.
"There's not one right method, but we wanted to be sure we considered other options," she said. "Our recommendation and final method selection was based on finding a balance between sensitivity, throughput and cost.
"The method we selected originally turned out to have the lowest detection limit, while also being relatively high-throughput and cost effective," Stadler said. "Baylor switched over to the same concentration method as a result, which gave us confidence that we were truly generating the best possible data for the city."
The Houston researchers hope the study will guide municipalities around the world that have, or are considering, their own wastewater testing labs.
"A lot of major cities are already doing this, and there are now statewide programs emerging in Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and a few others," Stadler said.
She noted the Houston labs are already looking for COVID mutations. "We're doing research on sequencing wastewater samples to be able to detect highly transmissible variants circulating in the community," Stadler said.
That the study even happened is a bonus, considering the workload for Stadler's Rice lab and counterparts at Baylor and the Houston Health Department. Since ramping up in mid-2020, the labs have analyzed hundreds of samples a week from the city's 39 wastewater plants. Since then, Houston has added testing points at dozens of nursing homes, schools and other critical locations.
"The city is planning to expand the number of stations to get zip code-level information, and we're working with them to analyze that data," Stadler said. "Someday, it could be a tool to look for a panel of viruses, not just this one."
INFORMATION:
Rice graduate student Zachary LaTurner is lead author of the study. Co-authors are Rice postdoctoral researcher David Zong and graduate students Prashant Kalvapalle, Kiara Reyes Gamas, Tessa Crosby and Priyanka Ali; Austen Terwilliger, director of operations of the TAILOR Labs at Baylor; Baylor staff scientist Vasanthi Avadhanula, lab assistant Haroldo Hernandez Santos, research technician Kyle Weesner, Pedro Piedra, a professor of molecular virology and microbiology, and Anthony Maresso, an associate professor of molecular virology and microbiology; and Loren Hopkins, chief environmental science officer for the Houston Health Department and a professor in the practice of statistics at Rice. Stadler is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.
The Houston Health Department, National Science Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, the Environmental Research and Education Foundation and a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine Gulf Research Early Career Research Fellowship supported the study.
-30-
Read the abstract at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135421002414
This news release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/2021/03/22/houston-refines-hunt-for-covid-in-wastewater/
Additional Contact:
Mike Williams
713-348-6728
mikewilliams@rice.edu
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
Related materials:
Rice helps give Houston early COVID-19 warnings:
http://news.rice.edu/2020/09/24/rice-helps-give-city-early-covid-19-warnings/
Stadler Research Lab:
https://www.stadler.rice.edu
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering:
https://cee.rice.edu
George R. Brown School of Engineering:
https://engineering.rice.edu
Image for download:
https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2021/03/0322_WASTE-1-WEB.jpg
HA filtration and bead beating ticked all the boxes for most efficient method to find signs of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater, according to a new study led by Rice University. The study could serve as a guide to municipalities setting up their own testing facilities. (Credit: Zachary LaTurner/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,978 undergraduates and 3,192 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance.
Breast cancer is the most common type of tumour found in women. 69,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in Germany alone. Around 80 percent of tumours originate in the luminal cells, the milk-producing cells of the mammary gland. 10 percent of the cells resemble those of the underlying (basal) cell layer. These are muscle-like epithelial cells that contract when the mammary gland produces milk in order to push it out.
"While luminal breast tumours are usually sensitive to hormones, 80 percent of basal-like tumours are triple-negative. They have no receptors ...
Scientists from the University of Leeds's Nutritional Epidemiology Group used data from 500,000 people, discovering that consuming a 25g serving of processed meat a day, the equivalent to one rasher of bacon, is associated with a 44% increased risk of developing the disease.
But their findings also show eating some unprocessed red meat, such as beef, pork or veal, could be protective, as people who consumed 50g a day were 19% less likely to develop dementia.
The researchers were exploring a potential link between consumption of meat and the development of dementia, a health condition that affects 5%-8% of over 60s worldwide.
Their results, titled Meat consumption and risk of incident dementia: cohort study of 493888 UK Biobank participants, ...
Ikoma, Japan - What if you found out that you could heal using only a finger? It sounds like science fiction, reminiscent of the 1982 movie E.T. Well, it turns out that your body's own cells can do something similarly unexpected. Researchers at Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) report in a new study seen in Developmental Cell a means by which cells may use "fingers" to communicate instructions for wound closure.
NAIST project leader Shiro Suetsugu has devoted his career to studying how cells shape themselves, initiate and accept communication among one other. An under-appreciated means of doing so is through filopodia, small finger-like ...
WHAT:
Children in high-poverty neighborhoods who participated in a comprehensive preschool program that provided parents with health and educational services and job training had a lower body mass index (BMI) in their late 30s than a similar group who participated in the usual early childhood programs, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The study authors concluded that comprehensive, school-based early childhood programs could lead to improvements in body mass index later in life. The study was conducted by Arthur J. Reynolds, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota, and colleagues. It appears in JAMA Pediatrics. ...
What The Study Did: This study examined whether the quantity and quality of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were different among children, adolescents and young adults.
Authors: Zhen Zhao, Ph.D., of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4302)
Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.
INFORMATION:
Media ...
What The Study Did: Researchers investigated whether shelter-in-place orders in the United States during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with changes in body weight among adults.
Authors: Gregory M. Marcus, M.D., M.A.S., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.2536)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...
What The Study Did: This study estimates how many older adults in the United States who need equipment to help with bathing and toileting don't have it and the factors associated with not having such equipment.
Authors: Kenneth Lam, M.D., University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.0204)
Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.
INFORMATION:
Media advisory: The ...
What The Study Did: This economic evaluation estimates the budget impact and affordability of a gene therapy for severe sickle cell disease from the perspective of U.S. Medicaid programs with the highest prevalence of sickle cell disease.
Authors: Patrick DeMartino, M.D., of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.7140)
Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including ...
What The Study Did: Researchers investigated associations of maternal hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and the risk of autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and intellectual disability in children as well as overall cognitive performance.
Authors: Judith S. Brand, Ph.D., of Örebro University in Örebro, Sweden, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.6856)
Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...
What The Study Did: Rates and significance of incidental findings in brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in children were investigated in this study.
Authors: Leo Sugrue, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2021.0306)
Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author ...
