Detection of enteroviruses and and-food-and-mouth disease viral pathogens in domestic wastewater and the secondary effluent

摘要

Most of enteroviruses which are frequently found in various waters, have beenrecognized as the common causes of human infection, such as the aseptic meningitis andhand-food-and-mouth disease (HFMD) reported to be prevalent in many regions in China. Toinvestigate the occurrence of the enteroviruses in wastewater and treated wastewater, nested-PCRand the real-time PCR methods were utilized to detect the enteroviruses in three domesticwastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in Xi’an, China. At the same time, a semi-nested PCRusing groups of specific primers was developed to examine the occurrence of pathogenic virusesof HFMD, i.e. human enterovirus 71 (EV71) and coxsackievirus A16 (CVA16), coxsackievirusA10 (CVA10). The result showed that the positive ratios for EV71, CVA16 and CVA10 were only0.06, 0.06 and 0.23, respectively, comparing with the positive ratio of 0.96 for enteroviruses. Theconcentration of enteroviruses in influent and secondary effluent trended to be stable in the rangeof 102-103copies/mL in winter, while it fluctuated in a much wider range in the spring time. Themethodology developed in this study can provide a useful tool for further investigation of theHFMD viruses’ occurrence and their relationship with enteroviruses.