The ongoing and rapidly expanding outbreak of #mpox in DRC is concerning for many reasons incl.:
- It’s clade I MPXV (different from clade II causing global outbreak)
- First time sexual transmission has been documented for clade I MPXV
- First time spreading in Kinshasa

who.int/emergencies/disease-ou…

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."
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20…

#virus #virology @virology #epidemiology #InfectiousDisease

Putative APOBEC3 deaminase editing in MPXV as evidence for sustained human transmission since at least 2016

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.

^bioRxiv

7/6
Interesting report on #Mpox #virus:
(AKA #MonkeyPox or #MPXV)

"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.

#virology #epidemiology #InfectiousDisease
doi.org/10.1016/S2666-5247(23)…

🦠
"As of 2 December 2022, over 82,000 human #mpox (or #monkeypox) cases have been laboratory confirmed in 110 countries worldwide."

And sporadic reports are still coming in:
c.im/@andrew_a_lover/109673550…

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:

"Structure of monkeypox #virus DNA polymerase holoenzyme"
doi.org/10.1126/science.ade636…
#virology @virology