Research in Portugal and the UK has provided exciting new insights into the monkeypox virus.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the monkeypox outbreak an international public health emergency. According to the WHO, a dangerous viral infection has been detected in 75 countries and territories of the world, more than 16 thousand cases of infection and five deaths have been recorded. Most infections are still seen in Europe and America, mainly in men.
It mutates surprisingly fast
The Portuguese study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, offers the most in-depth look at the genetic material of the monkeypox virus to date. The researchers took samples from 15 patients and compared the genomes of the virus that infected them. Each of the patients was found to have the monkeypox strain from Nigeria that led to previous outbreaks in 2018-2019 in the UK, Israel and Singapore.
But tests have shown that since the last outbreak, the virus has mutated 50 times – 12 times more than expected. “These data completely refute what is known about the mutation rate of the monkeypox virus,” said study author João Paulo Gomes of the Portuguese National Institute of Health.
West African monkeypox has a lower mortality rate
New monkeypox genome sequencing has helped researchers better understand the current outbreak. The strain of the virus that led to it belongs to the West African clade of monkeypox, which occurs in western Cameroon and Sierra Leone and has a mortality rate of less than 1 percent.
A clade (variety) is a group of organisms for which common ancestors or a common genetic lineage can be traced. There is another common clade of monkeypox known as Central African, which is more common in the Congo Basin and has a mortality rate of up to 10 percent.
It is difficult to track the incubation period of monkeypox
The incubation period of the disease ranges from five to 21 days, making it difficult to track the spread. The WHO identified Patient Zero, the first confirmed case identified in a person who traveled from Nigeria to the US in early May. But the Portuguese researchers disagree with the WHO. According to them, cases of the disease were confirmed in Portugal and the UK at the end of April.
Scientists point to a highly probable fact that the virus may have been imported from a country where monkeypox endemic, for example, from Nigeria, but other possibilities cannot be left out. For example, after the 2018-2019 outbreak, the virus quietly spread through humans or animals to countries where it is not endemic, such as the UK or Singapore.
At the same time, according to them, it is not clear whether the mutated version is more dangerous than the original. “The authors describe an unexpectedly high number of mutations in the virus, but their implications for disease severity or infectivity are unclear,” said Hugh Adler of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who not involved in learning Portuguese, who commented. in the article.
“We found no change in clinical severity in patients diagnosed in the current outbreak,” added Adler, who has worked with monkeypox patients in the UK in previous outbreaks.
Mainly transmitted through sex
Scientists from Queen Mary University of London studied 528 confirmed cases of monkeypox virus infection in 16 countries between April 27 and June 24, 2022. According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 98 percent of those infected are gay or bisexual men, and 41 percent have HIV. Their average age is 38 years. The average number of sexual partners in the past three months was five, and about a third of them attended sex parties or saunas during this period.
The study also showed that monkeys with smallpox experienced symptoms not previously associated with the virus, such as sporadic genital lesions and ulcers in the mouth or anus. Many of these are similar to symptoms of sexually transmitted diseases, which can lead to misdiagnosis, the researchers warn.
“It is important to emphasize that monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted infection in the traditional sense – it can be acquired through any close physical contact. However, our work shows that most cases of infection so far is associated with sexual activity, primarily, but not only among men who have sex with men,” said study leader John Thornhill. The scientists emphasized that monkeypox can also be transmitted through of contact with respiratory droplets or clothing exhaled by a sick person.
“Most cases were mild, non-fatal. Although 13 percent of patients were hospitalized, most of them had no serious complications,” the study notes. Monkeypox DNA was found in the semen of 29 of the 32 individuals tested, but it is not yet clear whether the semen can transmit the infection.
Monkeypox was ignored for decades
In general, humanity lacks knowledge about monkeypox. Studying the genetics of this virus is “in its infancy,” says Hugh Adler. “We have the genome sequence, so we have an idea of how the virus works. But in terms of understanding what its genes do, and what the consequences are for evolution if the genes change, there is very little research on this issue. compared to other. viruses that we know,” admitted the scientist.
The Gomes group’s work in Portugal has provided “exciting” new insights into the biology of monkeypox, he said, but he noted that the study only appears to have occurred because of the spread of the virus in countries with high income “If the world community had applied the same scientific resources to monkeypox outbreaks in Africa, we might have had a much larger knowledge base,” Adler said.
The WHO agrees with him. The monkeypox virus has been circulating in several African countries for decades, the organization says, and has been largely ignored in terms of research and funding. The WHO Committee on Emergency Situations has called for a change in this approach not only for monkeypox, but also for other “neglected diseases”. Recall that this infection was first detected in a monkey in 1958, and the first human case was detected in a small child in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970.
Source: korrespondent
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.