TY - JOUR
T1 - Wastewater-based epidemiology combined with local prescription analysis as a tool for temporalmonitoring of drugs trends - A UK perspective
AU - Rice, Jack
AU - Kannan, Andrew M.
AU - Castrignanò, Erika
AU - Jagadeesan, Kishore
AU - Kasprzyk-Hordern, Barbara
N1 - Funding Information:
The support of Wessex Water Services Ltd and the University of Bath EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (Project number: EP/K503897/1 and EP/R51164X/1 ) is greatly appreciated. This work is a part of the Wastewater Fingerprinting for Public Health Assessment (ENTRUST) project funded by Wessex Water and EPSRC IAA (grant no. EP/R51164X/1 ). This work was also supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration [Grant agreement 317205 , the SEWPROF MC ITN project, ‘A new paradigm in drug use and human health risk assessment: Sewage profiling at the community level’] and the Leverhulme Trust (Project No RPG-2013-297 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2020/9/15
Y1 - 2020/9/15
N2 - This paper reports the application of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for the monitoring of one city in the UK in years 2014–2018 as a means of 1) exploring relative temporal changes of illicit drug usage trends across 5 sampling weeks in 5 years, (2) assessing policy impact in reducing drug consumption, focussing particularly on mephedrone, which was classified as a class B drug in the UK in 2010, and the effects of subsequent regulation such as the novel psychoactive substances (NPS) bill of 2016, (3) investigating temporal changes in consumption of prescription pharmaceuticals vs illicit drug usage, and (4) comparing consumption of prescription drugs with WBE to enable more accurate verification of prescription drugs with abuse potential. Mephedrone was quantified only for the first two years of the study, 2014–2015, and remained undetected for the next three years of the study. This shows that given enough time changes in drug policy can have an effect on drug consumption. However, after the introduction of the 2016 NPS bill, between the third and fourth study years, there was an observable increase in the consumption of “classic” drugs of abuse such as cocaine, MDMA and ketamine suggesting a shift away from novel psychoactives. The unique prescription dataset allowed for a more accurate calculation of heroin consumption using morphine by examining other sources morphine. Additionally, for compounds with controlled prescription like methadone, trends in consumption estimated by wastewater and trends in prescription correlated. Wastewater-based epidemiology is a powerful tool for examining whole populations and determining the efficacy and direction of government actions on health, as it can, alongside prescription and wider monitoring data, provide a clear insight into what is being consumed by a population and what action is needed to meet required goals.
AB - This paper reports the application of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for the monitoring of one city in the UK in years 2014–2018 as a means of 1) exploring relative temporal changes of illicit drug usage trends across 5 sampling weeks in 5 years, (2) assessing policy impact in reducing drug consumption, focussing particularly on mephedrone, which was classified as a class B drug in the UK in 2010, and the effects of subsequent regulation such as the novel psychoactive substances (NPS) bill of 2016, (3) investigating temporal changes in consumption of prescription pharmaceuticals vs illicit drug usage, and (4) comparing consumption of prescription drugs with WBE to enable more accurate verification of prescription drugs with abuse potential. Mephedrone was quantified only for the first two years of the study, 2014–2015, and remained undetected for the next three years of the study. This shows that given enough time changes in drug policy can have an effect on drug consumption. However, after the introduction of the 2016 NPS bill, between the third and fourth study years, there was an observable increase in the consumption of “classic” drugs of abuse such as cocaine, MDMA and ketamine suggesting a shift away from novel psychoactives. The unique prescription dataset allowed for a more accurate calculation of heroin consumption using morphine by examining other sources morphine. Additionally, for compounds with controlled prescription like methadone, trends in consumption estimated by wastewater and trends in prescription correlated. Wastewater-based epidemiology is a powerful tool for examining whole populations and determining the efficacy and direction of government actions on health, as it can, alongside prescription and wider monitoring data, provide a clear insight into what is being consumed by a population and what action is needed to meet required goals.
KW - Illicit drugs
KW - Mephedrone
KW - Opioids
KW - Wastewater-based epidemiology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85085585258&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139433
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139433
M3 - Article
C2 - 32498013
AN - SCOPUS:85085585258
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 735
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 139433
ER -