Title
Temporal dynamics of norovirus determined through monitoring of municipal wastewater by pyrosequencing and virological surveillance of gastroenteritis cases
Date Issued
01 April 2016
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Kazama S.
Masago Y.
Tohma K.
Souma N.
Imagawa T.
Suzuki A.
Liu X.
Oshitani H.
Omura T.
Tohoku University
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
Norovirus is a leading etiological agent of viral gastroenteritis. Because of relatively mild disease symptoms and frequent asymptomatic infections, information on the ecology of this virus is limited. Our objective was to examine the genetic diversity of norovirus circulating in the human population by means of genotyping the virus in municipal wastewater. We investigated norovirus genogroups I and II (GI and GII) in municipal wastewater in Japan by pyrosequencing and quantitative PCR (qPCR) from November 2012 to March 2013. Virological surveillance for gastroenteritis cases was concurrently conducted in the same area. A total of fourteen distinct genotypes in total (GI.1, 3, 4, 6, 7, GII.2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, and 17), with up to eight genotypes detected per sample, were observed in wastewater using pyrosequencing; only four genotypes (GI.6, GII.4, 5, and 14) were obtained from clinical samples. Seventy-eight percent of norovirus-positive stool samples contained GII.4, but this genotype was not dominant in wastewater. The norovirus GII.4 Sydney 2012 variant, which appeared and spread during our study period, was detected in both the wastewater and clinical samples. These results suggest that an environmental approach using pyrosequencing yields a more detailed distribution of norovirus genotypes/variants. Thus, wastewater monitoring by pyrosequencing is expected to provide an effective analysis of the distribution of norovirus genotypes causing symptomatic and asymptomatic infections in human populations.
Start page
244
End page
253
Volume
92
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Virología Enfermedades infecciosas
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84957616021
PubMed ID
Source
Water Research
ISSN of the container
00431354
Sponsor(s)
We thank Mr. Yoshimitsu Konta for technical assistance on wastewater analysis and Dr. Hitoshi Onodera for his support with virological surveillance of gastroenteritis cases. This study was supported by CREST from the Japan Science and Technology Agency .
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus