Exploring the link between human gut microbiomes in wastewater and population lifestyle factors: smoking, obesity, and alcoholism

Public health is intrinsically linked to population lifestyle, prompting significant global investments annually to foster its improvement. In alignment with this global trend, obesity, smoking, and alcohol abuse have been recognized as three predominant health risk factors in the Australian society. During 2017-2018, approximately 67% of Australians were overweight, with 31% classified as obese. Obesity now is the second leading risk of ill health and death in Australia. This trend, still increasing, has escalated the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. At the same time, alcohol and tobacco are major burdens of preventable diseases and death. As of 2016, the prevalence of smoking in individuals aged 18 and over was approximately 14%, and the risky alcohol users associated with diseases or injury was 17%. Annually, smoking is responsible for nearly 20,500 deaths, whereas alcohol causes about 1,500 deaths. Despite a yearly decline in the number of Australians who smoke and abuse alcohol, the substantial impact of alcohol and tobacco on public health, social safety, and the economy continues. Traditional monitoring methods of these major public health risk factors, such as self-reporting and hospital surveillance, often fall short of providing timely and accurate data, in addition to concerns over privacy and increased financial costs. To address the problems, this study explored a novel approach of surveying the use and health impact of tobacco, alcohol and obesity rate in communities through analyzing the collective human gut microbiome in wastewater samples collected from the service catchments. The gut microbiome, known to reflect human health, from the community population is mixed in municipal wastewater, which thus contains extensive data related to human health of the community population. This study employed sequencing method to analyze the gut microbiome present in wastewater to identify potential microbial biomarkers that could differentiate different levels of obesity, smoking and alcohol abuse.