A new study shows that monkeypox has been around longer than expected – since 2016. This represents a paradigm shift for researchers. Because the origins of the surprising outbreak in 2022 were long ago.
Until recently, monkeypox was considered a so-called zoonosis, a disease transmitted from animals to humans, the international research team wrote in the study published Thursday in Science. The first cases of monkeypox in humans were discovered in the 1970s. Most cases of illness afterward were considered isolated transmissions, so-called spillover events, involving only a few affected people in the human population.
That changed in 2022, the researchers said. The fact that monkeypox suddenly appeared outside countries where infected animals were known indicated that the spread of the virus was no longer merely a zoonotic infection.
Strong differences in DNA sequences
The research team now analyzed gene sequences of the monkeypox virus from 2018 and 2022. The researchers discovered that the DNA sequences differed more than expected.
According to the study, most of these mutations are changes in building blocks in the genome that result from the activity of a defense enzyme in the human immune system called APOBEC3. According to the researchers, this suggests that the monkeypox virus is spreading among the human population and not just sporadically jumping from animals to humans. Based on the number of mutations per year, the research team estimated that the latest lineage of monkeypox virus has been circulating in the human population since 2016.
“But there is no evidence that these mutations have changed the virus in any relevant way,” says Neher. There are no indications that this has changed the transmissibility of the virus.
Source: Krone
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