In 2020, over 100,000 people died from a fatal overdose. The decades-long exponential growth in deaths from substance use, especially recent trends in fentanyl, its analogs, and other novel psychoactive substances, has increased national calls for better drug surveillance. These methods include “non-traditional” epidemiologic approaches such as high-resolution statistical projections, rapid analysis of law enforcement seized drug samples, proactive social media pharmacovigilance, monitoring dark web financial transactions, analyzing urine drug screens from private laboratories and wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). During COVID-19, WBE became “mainstream” in popular media for its ability to detect SARS-COV2 and a national wastewater surveillance network (NWSS) was established by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To date, the NWSS is focused on COVID-19 surveillance and the US still lacks a system focused on detecting drugs of abuse entering into communities. Our project, funded by the National Institutes of Justice, was designed as a time-intensive, state-level (Kentucky) and networked approach to on-going drug monitoring along interstate highways and truck servicing facilities. The project known as Wastewater Epidemiology to Examine Stimulant Trends (weTEST) is focused on stimulant drug classes (e.g., cocaine, amphetamines, methamphetamine) given Kentucky’s historic role as a “hot spot” and bellwether state for these drugs (KY ranked 3rd in psychostimulant-related mortality in the U.S. in 2019). Furthermore, our project triangulates “traditional” sources of epidemiologic data, such as stimulant-involved overdoses, emergency medical service calls related to drug overdoses, and stimulant prescribing data at high geographic resolution (e.g., zipcode) to understand the strengths/limitations of each data source.

Wastewater-based epidemiology for drug detection: Epidemiological motivations

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.