title: Assessing prescription drug abuse using functional principal component analysis (FPCA) of wastewater data.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Wastewater-based epidemiology is an alternative method for estimating the collective drug use in a community. We applied functional data analysis, a statistical framework developed for analysing curve data, to investigate weekly temporal patterns in wastewater measurements of three prescription drugs with known abuse potential: methadone, oxazepam and methylphenidate, comparing them to positive and negative control drugs.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sewage samples were collected in February 2014 from a wastewater treatment plant in Oslo, Norway. The weekly pattern of each drug was extracted by fitting of generalized additive models, using trigonometric functions to model the cyclic behaviour. From the weekly component, the main temporal features were then extracted using functional principal component analysis. Results are presented through the functional principal components (FPCs) and corresponding FPC scores.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Clinically, the most important weekly feature of the wastewater-based epidemiology data was the second FPC, representing the difference between average midweek level and a peak during the weekend, representing possible recreational use of a drug in the weekend. Estimated scores on this FPC indicated recreational use of methylphenidate, with a high weekend peak, but not for methadone and oxazepam.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The functional principal component analysis uncovered clinically important temporal features of the weekly patterns of the use of prescription drugs detected from wastewater analysis. This may be used as a post-marketing surveillance method to monitor prescription drugs with abuse potential. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Stefania
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Salvatore
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.|Department of Health Studies, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway.
authors.forename: Jo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Røislien
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.|Norwegian Institute for Water Research, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Jose A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Baz-Lomba
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Jørgen G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Bramness
mesh_terms: D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008691:Methadone / Q000008:administration & dosage; D008774:Methylphenidate / Q000008:administration & dosage; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009664:Norway / Q000453:epidemiology; D010076:Oxazepam / Q000008:administration & dosage; D063487:Prescription Drug Misuse / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D012722:Sewage / Q000032:analysis*; D015813:Substance Abuse Detection / Q000379:methods; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D062065:Wastewater / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D008691:Methadone; D008774:Methylphenidate; D010076:Oxazepam; D012722:Sewage; D062065:Wastewater
keywords: functional principal component analysis; generalized additive models; pharmacoepidemiology; prescription drugs; wastewater-based epidemiology