A study conducted recently in Ohio has found that wastewater can be a vital provider of clues that reflect the health patterns of entire communities. The findings of this study open the door to a readily available mechanism for tracking the health status of communities and taking proactive measures to address the issues found.
The study, whose findings were released in the Environmental Research journal, was conducted by a team at Ohio State University. The researchers wanted to find out what else the wastewater samples obtained during the pandemic could be useful for. Those samples had been successfully used to track Covid-19 patterns in communities.
The lead author of the study, Emma Lancaster, explains that wastewater was an invaluable tool during the pandemic as it proved its utility in tracking infectious diseases. Their aim was therefore to see whether the same technique could apply to other health patterns beyond infectious diseases.
The team analyzed nearly 30 samples of wastewater obtained from eight cities in Ohio in 2022. The communities served by those wastewater treatment plants hosted approximately 1.30 million individuals that lived in both rural and urban settings.
They analyzed the gut bacteria found in the wastewater then compared this information to the data publicly available on chronic health conditions, demographics, socioeconomic conditions and health behaviors. The comparison yielded distinct profiles of bacteria in different cities, showing that the gut microbiome tended to have certain characteristics for each community.
The team noted that certain types of gut bacteria tended to reflect the incidence of asthma, high blood pressure, obesity plus other chronic medical conditions. Similarly, the bacteria in the wastewater also revealed associations with depression, unemployment, physical activity as well as smoking.
The data also revealed a major finding: the Desulfovibrio group of gut bacteria tended to occur in high levels in communities where eight health conditions were prevalent. These included stroke, obesity, high blood pressure and several other chronic conditions. Lancaster explained that people in rural communities tend to exhibit poorer health outcomes, and the gut bacteria found in wastewater reflected this status.
She suggested that policymakers need to monitor wastewater in order to identify the communities that face greater challenges. With this knowledge, they can confidently allocate health resources to address the issues identified.
Wastewater monitoring can serve as a great cog in fully harnessing the testing equipment commercialized by companies like Co-Diagnostics Inc. (NASDAQ: CODX) although this study examined community-level associations with chronic health conditions rather than detecting infectious outbreaks.
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