The first British patients with monkeypox, a disease that is spreading around the world, showed symptoms distinct from those usually spotted in African countries, according to a study. The bouts of fever and the skin lesions differ.
While a flare-up of fever was considered almost systematic in monkeypox in West Africa, where this condition had hitherto been limited, just over half of the patients studied in the United Kingdom had it, note this study published Saturday in the Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Carried out on regarding fifty patients, this work, still limited, is one of the first to characterize the clinical specificities of the current epidemic of monkeypox.
This disease was previously limited to ten African countries. But, for several months many cases, more than 3000 according to the latest news from the World Health Organization (WHO), have been recorded in Europe, including in Switzerland, and on the American continent.
In the study sample of half of the cases that arose in the UK, monkeypox manifested markedly differently from what was known in Africa. Not only are bouts of fever less frequent, but they also appear much shorter and require far fewer hospitalizations.
No genetic modification
As for the typical lesions of the disease, they are most often concentrated around the genitals. In the previous cases, they were generally larger, reaching for example the face or the nape of the neck.
For the authors of the study, this specificity suggests that the first British cases were contaminated by contact during sexual relations. This hypothesis, to be clearly distinguished from the idea that the disease has become sexually transmitted, corresponds to the well-established notion that contamination is possible by touching a skin lesion in another patient.
However, these different symptoms do not mean that the current epidemic is due to a new version of the virus, as other researchers point out. ‘There is no major genetic modification’ in the viruses sequenced in current patients, noted pulmonologist Hugh Adler.
He argues that in Africa, many cases, without fever or with limited lesions, may have gone undetected, biasing comparisons.
/ATS
