ArticlePloS one2026
Assessing the sensitivity and predictive value of wastewater in detection of Hepatitis A cases in San Diego County.
Article in PloS one, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Hepatitis A virus (HAV) remains a significant public health concern in the United States. Because infected individuals shed virus through stool, HAV can be detected in wastewater. Shedding occurs prior to the onset of symptoms that lead to clinical diagnosis, highlighting the potential of wastewater as an early case detection tool. This analysis aims to quantify key diagnostic metrics of wastewater surveillance for detecting HAV cases, which have not been previously defined. Utilizing wastewater data from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Facility in San Diego County, which serves around 2.2 million people, we assessed the sensitivity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of wastewater HAV signals (positive/negative) in identifying shedding cases over a 308-day period. The number of people shedding virus on a given day was estimated through confirmed cases and presumed shedding intervals (2 weeks before and 1 week after symptom onset) and compared to wastewater signals. The sensitivity in detecting at least one shedding case on a given day using observed wastewater signals was 48.1%. Reclassifying the wastewater signal using simple data aggregations yielded sensitivities from 67.3% to 84.6%. Sensitivity increased as more individuals were shedding virus. The highest PPV (52.2%) and NPV (74.2%) were observed when a 5-sample trimmed centered average was used to reclassify the wastewater signal, indicating the utility of this preprocessing method. Conditional on clinical case detection and shedding assumptions, our study demonstrates that wastewater is a promising tool, providing signals that can inform public health surveillance.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.