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Monkeypox: Real Danger or Excessive Concern? Virologist Sandra Ciesek explains

2022-05-26T03:13:37.605Z


Monkeypox: Real Danger or Excessive Concern? Virologist Sandra Ciesek explains Created: 05/26/2022, 05:02 By: Anna Lorenz Monkeypox: how dangerous is the disease? What are the symptoms? And is there a therapy? Virologist and professor Sandra Ciesek explains. Frankfurt am Main – monkeypox in Germany. The corona pandemic seems to have reached manageable proportions, and now a new, epidemic virus


Monkeypox: Real Danger or Excessive Concern?

Virologist Sandra Ciesek explains

Created: 05/26/2022, 05:02

By: Anna Lorenz

Monkeypox: how dangerous is the disease?

What are the symptoms?

And is there a therapy?

Virologist and professor Sandra Ciesek explains.

Frankfurt am Main – monkeypox in Germany.

The corona pandemic seems to have reached manageable proportions, and now a new, epidemic virus is appearing in Europe.

The cases are piling up, and there is no discernible connection between the infections, which have now reached the USA.

WHO and RKI warn that the first countries are imposing quarantine on sick people.

Understandably, the question arises in the public discussion: How dangerous is monkeypox really?

Virologist Sandra Ciesek has been working in research for 15 years. Before the monkeypox cases, she was mainly concerned with the corona virus.

On Twitter, the director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the University Hospital Frankfurt has now made important information about monkeypox available and thus addressed the question that seems to be emerging from the public discussion: is monkeypox a kind of corona substitute concern or a real one Danger?

Monkeypox: Virologist Ciesek with information about dangers, course and symptoms

"Unfortunately yes," is the virologist's answer to the question of how the zoonotic virus, which is capable of transmission between animals and humans, but also among humans, can be associated with complications or severe courses.

Ciesek, who keeps her post unpretentious and informative, points out that it's not just the skin affected by smallpox that carries the risk of inflammation and bacterial infections.

In the event of an eye infection, there is even a risk of loss of vision.

Another, but rare, complication that monkeypox can cause is pneumonia.

There have also been deaths in past virus outbreaks in Africa - the rate of up to ten percent "but cannot be transferred to our living conditions," said the expert.

Compared to the corona virus, monkeypox, from a medical point of view, has a decisive advantage - although they are also associated with "fever, headache and muscle pain, exhaustion", according to the virologist, "together with characteristic skin changes".

The smallpox, which may be "flat or slightly raised [...] [and] filled with a clear or yellowish fluid," occurs "primarily on the face, palms, and soles." also on the mouth, on the genitals and on the eyes”.

Nevertheless: The smallpox make the infection visible.

How bad is monkeypox?

Virologist Sandra Ciesek provided the first details.

© Kay Nietfeld / dpa / IMAGO / Bihlmayer photography / Montage

How dangerous is monkeypox?

University head of virology shares expert opinion

However, "rash, bodily fluids (such as fluid, pus or blood from skin lesions) and scabs" are also, regrettably, particularly contagious.

According to Ciesek, the infectiousness exists during the duration of the symptoms.

Monkeypox, which has an incubation period "between 7 and 14 (-21) days," usually plagued sufferers for between two and up to four weeks;

People with immunodeficiency are particularly at risk of contracting the virus.

"Transmission from animals to humans can occur through animal bites or through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected animal," says Ciesek.

The virus can also take this route of infection between people, because “the saliva can also be infectious if the patient has, for example, corresponding lesions in the mouth.” According to the virologist, awareness of the monkeypox virus is therefore necessary in order to prevent the disease from spreading desirable.

“It is important that you remember to check for monkeypox if you have skin symptoms (awareness).

Various virological institutes in Germany can do that.” In order to find out whether questionable skin rashes are monkeypox, PCR tests – which have been well known since the corona virus – and electron microscopes are used.

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Monkey Pox: Epidemic Danger or Just a Virus?

Expert Ciesek explains global concern

The comprehensive information that Ciesek provides in her article makes it clear that an infection with monkeypox is not new medical territory, but it is definitely not a desirable disease either.

The lessons of the Corona pandemic, which have collectively created an increased awareness of the potential impact of an epidemic, therefore lead to the question: Is a post-Covid monkeypox pandemic now conceivable?

“Time and time again, people with monkeypox are identified in other countries after traveling from regions where monkeypox is endemic.

Between 1970 and 1986, for example, more than 400 human cases could be detected,” emphasizes the virologist.

In 2003, contaminated imports of rodents provoked a "monkeypox outbreak in the USA with 71 cases in 6 states".

The disease is well known, and the symptom-related therapy is being tested - since January 2022, in extreme cases, "a vaccinia immunoglobulin (VIG) can even be used", i.e. a drug made from the blood of people who have been vaccinated against smallpox.

This is based on the fact that "the original smallpox vaccine [is] no longer available." Since smallpox was considered defeated for a long time, the vaccine, which sometimes had severe side effects, was no longer administered and the Production stopped.

"People under the age of 40/50 are therefore usually not vaccinated," the institute director draws the logical conclusion.

However, making a monkeypox vaccine available again does not require starting from scratch.

“A smallpox vaccine containing modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) has been approved in the EU.

Vaccination is currently being offered to close contacts in the UK.”

Seen in this way, even in the event of a large-scale outbreak of monkeypox, medicine appears to be many times better prepared than it is for the corona virus.

A quarantine in Germany is still being discussed.

However, the concern of the virologists stems from the fact that – in comparison to earlier cases of monkeypox, in which the chain of infection was regularly traceable – the infections currently emerging worldwide are not recognizable as being related to one another.

“This has not previously been typical of monkeypox.

The WHO is currently investigating[,] whether the virus has changed its properties (transmission) or whether there is an explanation as to how the virus was able to come to the different countries in Europe and the USA almost simultaneously.

So far, however, there has been no clear connection between the reported cases and trips from endemic countries, and also no proven connection to infected animals." The virologist does not necessarily see the great danger in the monkeypox virus per se, but above all in the possibility that this could have changed structurally and mutated.

Furthermore, it is not yet certain "[whether] people without symptoms can also transmit the virus," says Ciesek.

And how to deal with an epidemic virus,

which may not necessarily appear visibly, and which may have found previously unknown ways of spreading - this was painfully demonstrated by the corona pandemic.

(askl)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-05-26

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