New approaches for the quantitative detection of human pathogenic viruses within the freshwater-marine continuum

病毒是人类福祉的最大威胁之一，每年在全球范围内造成大量感染和数百万人死亡。这些病毒性疾病大多是通过粪便-口腔途径传播的，在这种途径中，受污染的食物和水往往与主要传染性阶段有关。尽管其中许多感染是自限性的，但社会和经济负担不应被低估。例如，据估计，诺如病毒(NOV)每年在英国造成200多万例疾病，导致数百万天的生产力损失，直接给NHS造成的经济负担估计超过1亿GB，每年给更广泛的经济造成超过20亿GB的负担。令人担忧的是，从一系列批判性审查中可以清楚地看出，由于气候变化，欧洲的水媒疾病负担可能会增加。由于废水基础设施的压力增加(由于人口增加)、下水道连接错误以及更频繁的风暴和洪水事件导致未经处理的污水(雨水排放)排放到河网和沿海地区，这一日益严重的问题正在加剧。考虑到问题的严重性和对不久的将来疾病负担的预测，现在是时候制定新的战略方法来减轻病毒污染，并开发新的和改进的风险评估工具来保护人类健康。有鉴于此，我们的建议旨在解决开发和验证在淡水、河口和沿海环境中检测和监测人类致病病毒的新工具的迫切需要。具体地说，我们将设计和测试实验和建模工具，以便能够从对比基质(例如海水、淡水、沉积物、污水、贝类)中强劲地恢复和量化病毒种群。这些工具将被设计成在空间和时间上捕捉病毒种群。我们将从人类健康的角度重点关注具有战略重要性的病毒(例如诺沃克病毒、沙波病毒、甲型肝炎/戊型肝炎)，但将通过对RNA和DNA病毒群落的总基因组分析将这些病毒置于更广泛的背景下。这些技术将在从集水区到海岸的规模上进行部署和演示，同时回答有关病毒流动的时间和空间动力学的基本问题。这些知识将被用来验证下一代数学模型，这些模型能够预测通过河网和沿海地带的病毒流量。综合起来，这些信息将与主要利益攸关方(例如CEFA)一起用于实施新的方法和指南，以评估感染风险(例如在娱乐水域、海滩和贝类渔业中)并保护人类健康。我们的建议直接解决了NERC环境微生物学和人类健康(EMHH)计划的战略目标。按照呼吁的要求，我们将提供“科学证据，支持快速有效地识别环境介质中的病原微生物，这些微生物可用于适当的工具和模型，以保护淡水和沿海地区的公共卫生”。这项工作还与食品标准局、食品和药物管理局和欧盟(DG Sanco和DG Mare)的政策目标和战略目标直接相关。

Viruses pose one of the biggest threats to human wellbeing being responsible for numerous infections and millions of deaths worldwide each year. Most of these viral diseases are passed via the faecal-oral route in which contaminated food and water are frequently implicated in the primary infectivity phase. Although many of these infections are self-limiting, the societal and economic burden should not be underestimated. For example, Norovirus (NoV) is estimated to cause over 2 million cases of illness in the UK each year resulting in millions of days of lost productivity and an economic burden estimated to exceed £100 million to the NHS directly and over £2 billion annually to the wider economy. Worryingly, it is clear from a range of critical reviews that the burden of waterborne disease is likely to increase in Europe in response to climate change. This increasing problem is being exacerbated by increased pressure on wastewater infrastructure (due to population rise), sewer misconnections and a greater incidence of storms and flood events causing the release of untreated sewage (stormwater discharge) into river networks and the coastal zone. Considering the magnitude of the problem and the disease burden forecast for the near future, it is timely to develop new strategic approaches for mitigating against viral contamination and to develop new and improved risk assessment tools for protecting human health. In view of this, our proposal aims to address the critical need to develop and validate new tools for the detection and surveillance of human pathogenic viruses in freshwater, estuarine and coastal environments. Specifically, we will design and test experimental and modelling tools to permit the robust recovery and quantification of viral populations from contrasting matrices (e.g. seawater, freshwater, sediments, effluent, shellfish). These tools will be designed to capture the viral populations in both space and time. We will focus on viruses of strategic importance from a human health perspective (e.g. Norovirus, Sapovirus, Hepatitis A/E), however, these will be placed in a wider context via metavirome analysis of RNA and DNA viral communities. These techniques will be deployed and demonstrated at the catchment-to-coast scale whilst simultaneously answering fundamental questions about the temporal and spatial dynamics of viral flow. This knowledge will be used to validate next generation mathematical models capable of predicting viral flow through the river network and coastal zone. Combined, this information will be used with key stakeholders (e.g. Cefas) in the implementation of new methods and guidelines for assessing infection risk (e.g. in recreational waters, beaches & shellfisheries) and for protecting human health. Our proposal directly addresses the strategic aims of the NERC Environmental Microbiology and Human Health (EMHH) Programme. As requested by the call, we will provide "scientific evidence to support fast and efficient identification of pathogenic microorganisms in environmental media which can be used in appropriate tools and models for the protection of public health targeting the freshwater and coastal zone". The work is also directly relevant to the policy objectives and strategic aims of the Food Standards Agency, Defra and European Union (DG Sanco, and DG Mare).