Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comparative Study
. 2024 Jul:328:114956.
doi: 10.1016/j.jviromet.2024.114956. Epub 2024 May 23.

Evaluation of different molecular systems for detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from wastewater samples

Fabio Morecchiato  1 , Marco Coppi  2 , Claudia Niccolai  2 , Alberto Antonelli  2 , Leandro Di Gloria  3 , Piergiuseppe Calà  4 , Fabrizio Mancuso  5 , Matteo Ramazzotti  3 , Tommaso Lotti  6 , Claudio Lubello  6 , Gian Maria Rossolini  7
Affiliations
Free article
Comparative Study

Evaluation of different molecular systems for detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from wastewater samples

Fabio Morecchiato et al. J Virol Methods. 2024 Jul.
Free article

Abstract

Wastewater-based epidemiology has proved to be a suitable approach for tracking the spread of epidemic agents including SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Different protocols have been developed for quantitative detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from wastewater samples, but little is known on their performance. In this study we compared three protocols based on Reverse Transcription Real Time-PCR (RT-PCR) and one based on Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR) for SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection from 35 wastewater samples. Overall, SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected by at least one method in 85.7 % of samples, while 51.4 %, 22.8 % and 8.6 % resulted positive with two, three or all four methods, respectively. Protocols based on commercial RT-PCR assays and on Droplet Digital PCR showed an overall higher sensitivity vs. an in-house assay. The use of more than one system, targeting different genes, could be helpful to increase detection sensitivity.

Keywords: Digital PCR; Droplet digital PCR; Environmental surveillance; Reverse transcription real-time PCR; SARS-CoV-2; Wastewater; Wastewater-based epidemiology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest G.M.R. reports grants, consulting fees, and payment or honoraria for lectures, presentations, speakers’ bureaus, manuscript writing or educational events from bioMérieux, MSD, Shionogi, Zambon, Menarini, Angelini; grants from Accelerate, Cepheid, Nordic Pharma, Seegene, Arrow, Symcel, DID, Hain Lifescience, Meridian, Setlance, Qvella, Qlinea, Biomedical Service, Quidel, QuantaMatrix, SD Biosensor; consulting fees from Pfizer and Qiagen; payment or honoraria for lectures, presentations, speakers’ bureaus, manuscript writing or educational events from Becton Dickinson, Cepheid and Pfizer, outside the submitted work. All other authors declare no competing interests.

References

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources