AP – European and US health authorities have identified a number of cases of monkeypox in recent days, mostly in young men. It is a surprising outbreak of a disease that rarely occurs outside of Africa.
Healthcare professionals around the world are watching for more cases because, for the first time, the disease appears to be spreading to people who have not traveled to Africa. However, they emphasize that the risk to the general population is low.
What is monkeypox?
Monkeypox is a virus that originates from wild animals such as rodents and primates and occasionally spreads to humans. Most human cases have been in Central and West Africa, where the disease is endemic.
The disease was first identified by scientists in 1958, when there were two outbreaks of measles-like disease in research monkeys – the so-called monkeypox. The first known human infection was in 1970 in a 9-year-old boy in a remote part of the Congo.
What are the symptoms and how is it treated?
Smallpox belongs to the same viral family as smallpox, but causes milder symptoms.
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Most patients experience only fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. People with more serious illnesses can develop rashes and lesions on the face and hands that can spread to other parts of the body.
The incubation period is from about five days to three weeks. Most people recover within about two to four weeks without having to be hospitalized.
Monkeypox can be fatal for up to one in 10 people and is thought to be more severe in children.
People exposed to the virus often receive one of several smallpox vaccines that have been shown to be effective against monkeypox. Antiviral drugs are also being developed.
On Thursday, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control recommended that all suspected cases be isolated and that the smallpox vaccine be offered to high-risk contacts.
This 2003 electron microscope image, provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows mature oval-shaped monkey virions, left and spherical immature virions on the right, obtained from a human skin sample. (Cynthia C. Goldsmith, Russell Regner / CDC via AP)
How many cases of monkeypox are there?
The World Health Organization estimates that there are thousands of monkeypox infections each year in about a dozen African countries. Most are in the Congo, which accounts for about 6,000 cases a year, and Nigeria, with about 3,000 cases a year.
Improper health surveillance systems mean many infected people are likely to be left out, experts say.
Isolated cases of monkeypox have sometimes been reported outside Africa, including the United States and the United Kingdom. The cases are usually related to travel to Africa or contact with animals from areas where the disease is more common.
In 2003, 47 people in six U.S. states had confirmed or probable cases. They caught the virus from domestic prairie dogs that were housed near imported small mammals from Ghana.
What is different in these cases?
This is the first time that monkeypox seems to have spread among people who have not traveled to Africa. Most of the cases involve men who have had sex with men.
In Europe, infections have been reported in the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
The British Health Security Agency said that its cases are not related, which suggests that there are many chains of transmission. The infections in Portugal were found in a sexual health clinic, where the men sought help for lesions on their genitals.
On Wednesday, U.S. officials reported a case of monkeypox in a man who recently traveled to Canada, where authorities are investigating alleged infections in the Montreal area.
Does monkeypox spread through sex?
It is possible, but it is not clear at the moment.
It has not been previously documented that monkeypox is spread through sex, but it can be transmitted through close contact with infected people, their body fluids, and their clothing or sheets.
Michael Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London, said it was too early to determine how men in the UK were infected.
“By nature, sexual activity involves intimate contact, which could be expected to increase the likelihood of transmission, regardless of a person’s sexual orientation and regardless of the mode of transmission,” Skinner said.
Francois Balu of University College London said that, according to the monkey pattern, sex qualifies as the kind of close contact needed to transmit the disease.
The cases in the United Kingdom “do not necessarily imply any recent change in the way the virus is transmitted,” Balu said.
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