A little over two years into a pandemic, the last thing you probably want to see is headlines announcing yet another disease spreading across the globe. And yet, here we are. Beginning in May 2022, an increasing number of cases of monkeypox have been reported in many countries around the world, both in places where the monkeypox virus is known to occur as well as places where it had previously never been observed. And although the monkeypox virus itself is not new, some of the ways it is acting during this outbreak are. In this episode, we take you through what we knew about monkeypox before this outbreak began, first by exploring the biology of this poxvirus and how it makes you sick before walking through the history of its discovery and past epidemics. Then we shift our focus to the ongoing outbreak: What is different about the patterns we’re seeing today compared to past outbreaks? How has the virus changed? How exactly is it transmitted? And, a question we haven’t asked in a very long time, how scared do we need to be? Tune in to hear us address these questions and many more about this re-emerging poxvirus.
| History | Biology |
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| Ladnyj, I. D., P. Ziegler, and E. Kima. “A human infection caused by monkeypox virus in Basankusu Territory, Democratic Republic of the Congo.” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 46.5 (1972): 593. | Pittman, P.R., Martin, J.W., Kingebeni, P.M., Tamfum, J.J.M., Wan, Q., Reynolds, M.G., Quinn, X., Norris, S., Townsend, M.B., Satheshkumar, P.S. and Soltis, B., 2022. Clinical characterization of human monkeypox infections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. medRxiv. |
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| Likos, Anna M., et al. “A tale of two clades: monkeypox viruses.” Journal of General Virology 86.10 (2005): 2661-2672. | Kozlov, M., 2022. Monkeypox outbreaks: 4 key questions researchers have. Nature. |
| Patrono, Livia V., et al. “Monkeypox virus emergence in wild chimpanzees reveals distinct clinical outcomes and viral diversity.” Nature Microbiology 5.7 (2020): 955-965. | Disease Outbreak News, WHO. Updated frequently: https://www.who.int/emergencies/emergency-events/item/2022-e000121 |
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| Simpson, Karl, et al. “Human monkeypox–After 40 years, an unintended consequence of smallpox eradication.” Vaccine 38.33 (2020): 5077-5081. | |
| Magnus, Preben von, et al. “A pox‐like disease in cynomolgus monkeys.” Acta Pathologica Microbiologica Scandinavica 46.2 (1959): 156-176. | |
| Yinka-Ogunleye, Adesola, et al. “Outbreak of human monkeypox in Nigeria in 2017–18: a clinical and epidemiological report.” The Lancet Infectious Diseases 19.8 (2019): 872-879. |
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