{"id":1039,"date":"2024-05-23T16:34:48","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T16:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/23\/wastewater-monitoring-in-texas-picked-up-an-early-signal-of-the-bird-flu-outbreak\/"},"modified":"2024-05-23T16:34:48","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T16:34:48","slug":"wastewater-monitoring-in-texas-picked-up-an-early-signal-of-the-bird-flu-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/23\/wastewater-monitoring-in-texas-picked-up-an-early-signal-of-the-bird-flu-outbreak\/","title":{"rendered":"Wastewater monitoring in Texas picked up an early signal of the bird flu outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In early March, Dr. Blake Hanson and his colleagues at <\/strong>the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute were preparing for a fire drill of sorts. <\/p>\n

What if a virus with the potential to spark the next pandemic turned up in the wastewater they monitor?\u00a0And what if that virus was the bird flu, H5N1, which has killed millions of animals and about half the nearly 900 people it has infected worldwide over the past two decades? <\/p>\n

They gamed out this what-if exercise on a Monday.\u00a0By Thursday of that same week, Hanson\u2019s colleague, Dr. Michael Tisza, a molecular virologist and microbiologist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, was ringing the alarm. <\/p>\n

This time, it was not a drill. <\/p>\n

\u201cMike had called me and said, \u2018Hey, I think I found it,\u2019\u201d said Hanson, an epidemiologist at UTHealth Houston who uses big data methods and genomics to investigate infectious diseases. <\/p>\n

That was March 7, about three weeks before the US Department of Agriculture announced that H5N1 had infected dairy cattle in Texas for the first time. <\/p>\n

A different kind of wastewater monitoring<\/h2>\n

Over the past two years, as the idea of sampling sewer systems for the virus that causes Covid-19 and other pathogens has caught on across the country, the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute \u2014 or TEPHI \u2014 took a different approach. <\/p>\n

Rather than looking only for specific viruses, researchers there decided to use advanced techniques and computers to help sift through the vast soup of genetic material in their wastewater samples.\u00a0By doing this, they\u2019re able to find viruses they expect to see as well as ones they don\u2019t know to look for. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can capture every known virus that that\u2019s in the sample, and then the computational team will analyze the data comprehensively and see signals for many viruses, and that\u2019s the benefit, I think, of what we\u2019re doing relative to other sites,\u201d said Dr. Anthony Maresso, a molecular virologist and microbiologist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who envisioned the system. <\/p>\n

At least two other organizations have also been looking for signs of H5N1 in wastewater. <\/p>\n

The WastewaterSCAN network, which is directed by researchers at Stanford and Emory Universities and Verily, <\/strong>recently posted a preprint study showing that it could detect the H5N1 virus in wastewater by looking for one specific part of the virus. <\/p>\n

In addition to that early data, the team has since tested three additional sewer systems: one in North Carolina near a known H5N1 cattle outbreak, one in a California city that was having an unseasonably high number of human influenza A cases and one in a city in Hawaii where there are no dairy processing plants and no known cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza. In each case, the test correctly ruled in or out H5N1 infections. It was so successful that WastewaterSCAN plans to start using the test at all 190 wastewater sites it monitors. <\/p>\n

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recently launched a dashboard <\/strong>showing sites where influenza A viruses are being detected at unusually high levels. <\/p>\n

H5N1 is an A strain of the flu virus, like some types of seasonal flu.\u00a0Detecting A strains now, in the offseason, is a reasonable proxy for H5N1, Maresso said, but it will be a less useful approach when seasonal influenza picks up again in the winter. <\/p>\n

TEPHI\u2019s system, on the other hand, could serve as a first alert for new viruses, the holy grail of pandemic prevention.\u00a0Since the team started monitoring in 2022, they have found over 400 viruses in Texas wastewater. <\/p>\n

Data at the flush of a toilet<\/h2>\n

Unlike taking a swab of a person\u2019s \u2014 or a cow\u2019s \u2013\u2014bodily secretions, wastewater monitoring is passive and doesn\u2019t depend on getting permission to test or having a person come into a clinic or emergency room, care that may be out of reach for farmworkers.\u00a0Researchers get data every time someone flushes a toilet or perhaps when wastewater systems treat agricultural waste, such as the permitted disposal of discarded milk. <\/strong> <\/p>\n

The biggest drawback of wastewater monitoring is that it is difficult to pinpoint the source of the pathogen. <\/p>\n

Since March 4, the date of the sample in which H5N1 was first detected by the TEPHI group, the researchers have found it all over the state, in the wastewater of nine cities in Texas <\/strong>and in 19 of the 23 sites they monitor.\u00a0They did not name the cities they tested in the study but said they did notify local public health authorities and the CDC <\/strong>about their results. <\/p>\n

Their findings were published recently as a preprint study, ahead of scrutiny by outside experts. <\/p>\n

Source of the signal is still a mystery<\/h2>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t really know where it\u2019s coming from,\u201d said Dr. Eric Boerwinkle, dean of the UTHouston School of Public Health and director of TEPHI. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can all guess, and some people have their favorite ideas,\u201d he said, noting that Texas is in the path of two major flyways for migratory birds and has a large agricultural industry that includes farmed birds and cows. <\/p>\n

But H5N1 has been tearing through wild and commercially farmed bird flocks in the US since 2022, when the team started monitoring wastewater, and they haven\u2019t seen it in any of their samples until now. <\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, something that\u2019s different now,\u201d Tisza said, \u201cis that <\/strong>it\u2019s commonly infecting dairy cows.\u201d <\/p>\n

Only one person has tested positive for H5N1 in connection with the cattle outbreak.\u00a0That person, a farm worker who had close contact with infected cows and developed a severe case of conjunctivitis, or redness and swelling of the eyes, but no breathing problems or <\/strong>congestion.\u00a0He was treated with antiviral medications and has recovered, public health officials said. <\/p>\n

\n
    <\/ul>\n<\/div>\n

    The CDC says the current risk to public health is low, but it\u2019s keeping a close eye on the situation. <\/p>\n

    The FDA recently tested 297 samples of dairy products purchased at grocery stores across the country. In expanded test results released Monday, the agency said, it found samples that were positive for dead fragments of the H5N1 bird flu virus in 15 of the 38 states where products were processed. About 1 out of every 5 samples had some traces of the virus, indicating that the outbreak might be more widespread than previously known. <\/p>\n

    TEPHI\u2019s Maresso says they can\u2019t rule out that what they are seeing is virus from milk that\u2019s been poured down the drain or even asymptomatic human infections.\u00a0He notes that they are not seeing an increase in flu cases in hospitals, which would alert them to severe infections. <\/p>\n

    \u201cIt would be maybe a more easily solvable puzzle if it was just one or two sites and we had some dairy or other processing plants right near that that plant where we\u2019re sampling from. It would explain things. but we have essentially detected the signal on in nearly every site and certainly every city to this point,\u201d Maresso said \u2013 even big cities in the state that aren\u2019t near dairy farms. <\/p>\n

    As far as the direction of the Texas outbreak, whether it\u2019s getting worse or going away, Tisza says, it\u2019s hard to say.\u00a0At first, he said, some cities his group monitors had a signal from H5N1 that was as strong as the one they see from seasonal influenza over the winter. <\/p>\n

    \u201cBut overall, it\u2019s been only maybe about 25 percent of that signal,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

    \u201cAs far as the overall trajectory, it\u2019s really kind of at a plateau right now. Not spiking up, not going away. So that in and of itself is interesting,\u201d said Tisza, who notes that they\u2019re keeping an eye on it.\u00a0\u201cAnd I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll hear from us again if there\u2019s a big spike.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

    This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In early March, Dr. Blake Hanson and his colleagues at the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute were preparing for a fire drill of sorts. What if a virus with the potential to spark the next pandemic turned up in the wastewater they monitor?\u00a0And what if that virus was the bird flu, H5N1, which has killed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":613,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}