1/6 🦠 A Few More #Mpox ( #MonkeyPox) Pandemic Updates 🦠
"Assuming APOBEC-editing is characteristic of [mpox] infection in human hosts, we propose an APOBEC clock that – at a rate of ~6 APOBEC3 mutations per year – estimates [mpox] has been circulating in humans since 2016." https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.23.525187v1
Mpox is often described as being endemic in West and Central Africa as a zoonotic disease that transmits through contact with the reservoir rodent host, likely a species of African squirrel.
"We monitored SARS-CoV-2 & MPXV genomes in the air... in Madrid nightclubs... in 2022. ... MPXV in the air had increased considerably on Aug 8, with 57% of positive samples containing more than 100 genomes per [cubic meter]; this date coincided with the peak incidence of mpox in Spain."
The authors suggest that air sampling might be a useful surveillance method.
This may be what a very very very slow pandemic looks like. 🦠 As a step towards the development of an #antiviral, (Peng et al., 2022) recently elucidated the structure of the mpox DNA polymerase:
