Recently, according to media reports, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and the United States have successively reported cases of human infection with monkeypox virus.
According to the British "Guardian" news, the United Kingdom reported a total of 9 confirmed cases of monkeypox, from the earliest 6th of this month found a family of three confirmed cases, the first case has recently gone to Nigeria.
These current cases, as well as those in european countries, suggest that ---- monkeypox may have spread in society.
WHO also responded, saying that the source of infection in these cases has not been identified at present, and based on the available information, the infection appears to have occurred first in the UK, and the degree of indigenous transmission is still under investigation, and more cases may be found.
After most of the day, what exactly is monkeypox?
For this type of disease, in fact, everyone is not familiar with it, the most direct reason ---- this virus is relatively rare, previously mainly occurred in the African tropical rainforest region.
As a viral zoonotic disease, monkeypox viruses can be transmitted through close contact and are not prone to human-to-human transmission, but it is not excluded that the virus is already evolving.
According to the treatment currently available to WHO, the monkeypox virus has emerged in the West African evolutionary branches, the Congo Basin (Central Africa) evolutionary branches, its case fatality rate is 1%, while the Congo Basin and other areas with poor medical conditions may reach 10%.
These viruses can usually be transmitted through body fluids, ulcers, contact with contaminated clothing, and respiratory droplets caused by prolonged face-to-face contact.
What are the symptoms of monkeypox infection?
Like the long-extinct smallpox virus, monkeypox has similar symptoms of infection, but is much less contagious than smallpox virus.
Once suffering from the disease, patients will initially have symptoms of fatigue, low fever, loss of appetite, abdominal pain and other uncomfortable symptoms.
Among them, after 1 to 2 days of fever, the patient's face and body will have a wide range of rashes, the rash is the size of a millet grain, and there will be red papules and herpes in the hands, feet, buttocks and other places.
In addition, some patients will show symptoms such as headache, irritability, muscle weakness, vomiting, limb shaking, etc. within 1 to 5 days of the progression of the disease, which are similar to the syndromes of encephalitis and meningitis.
Severe conditions may trigger cardiopulmonary failure
If the heart and lungs are affected, then the cardiopulmonary function will fail, and in the early stages of failure, the patient will have symptoms of heart rate, increased respiratory speed, cold sweat, increased blood pressure, and chills at the ends of the limbs.
The period of cardiopulmonary failure is a critical time for the disease, and once these symptoms are found, they need to be treated in time to reduce mortality.
In the period of cardiopulmonary failure, patients will have symptoms such as shortness of breath, cyanosis of the lips, and tachycardia. Severe patients may even have a decrease in blood pressure or shock, extremely unstable vital signs, and then life-threatening.
Of course, this situation is relatively rare, and most of the deaths are due to backward medical resources and cannot get good treatment intervention, which leads to the emergence of other complications and leads to death.
If it is the recovery period, the patient's body temperature will gradually return to normal, the vasoactive drugs will gradually decrease, the symptoms of nervous system involvement and cardiopulmonary function will gradually recover, and the general patient will recover in 2-4 weeks.
If a pregnant woman is infected with monkeypox, it may cause miscarriage or stillbirth
If pregnant women are infected with monkeypox during pregnancy, it may lead to complications, congenital monkeypox in newborns, and stillbirth, premature birth, miscarriage and other phenomena.
Although there have been vaccines and specific therapies for the treatment of monkeypox, they have not yet been widely used.
At present, the treatment principle is mostly to relieve symptoms and isolate patients.
To prevent infectious diseases such as monkeypox, unless it is necessary to prevent the spread of monkeypox viruses through the animal trade, animals that are already infected need to be isolated from other animals.
Individuals can reduce the potential risk of monkeypox infection by washing their hands with soap and eating thoroughly cooked meat.
But now the biggest worry is that this kind of infection, which was not common, is now frequent in Europe and the United States, and the possibility of virus upgrading or mutation is not ruled out, and whether it is contagious is also full of uncertainty.
Now that the world is still in the spread of the new crown virus variant, when will the repeated fluctuations of the epidemic come to an end?
Bibliography:
[1] ZHANG Zheng,YUE Zhihong. Research progress of monkeypox virus[J].Chinese Journal of Laboratory Medicine,2003(08):58-61.
[2] HUANG Xun,XU Xiuhua. Monkeypox virus and its prevention[J].Chinese Journal of Infection Control,2005(02):186-188.