Questão 17 - CESMAC Dia 1 2024/1

Answer the question based on the text below.

 

How Wastewater Testing Can help Tackle Americas’s Opioid Crisis

Wastewater can be a rich source of information about infectious diseases, like COVID-19, as well as flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), mpox and polio, since pathogens like viruses are shed in feces, urine and saliva, all of which is drained into sewage treatment plants. Sampling that water is a good way to screen for certain viruses, and, as more people bypass the medical system and labs in favor of testing themselves at home for things like COVID-19, health agencies like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have less data from which they can monitor the ebb and flow of infections. Wastewater, however, could change that and is quickly becoming the most reliable way to track diseases.

Now that same system will not only screen for infectious disease agents but for opioids as well. Biobot, the first company to offer commercial wastewater surveillance, is launching a program in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to track trends in opioid use in wastewater. In 2018, Biobot, based in Cambridge, Mass., began tracking opioids such as morphine, hydrocodone, oxycodone, codeine, heroin and fentanyl in a pilot program with several dozen cities. By highlighting areas where use of these drugs was higher, the city directed more resources to educating people about the dangers of overdose, as well as intervene with naloxone to reverse overdoses, which helped to reduce overdoses by 40% within a year.

Adaptado de: https://time.com/6315775/wastewater-testingopioids/ Acessado em 27 de setembro de 2023.

Seemingly useless, wastewater: