Pressroom

Source: Reuters Health Information Services

By: Peeples, Lynne

08/31/2010

Researchers led by Anne Rimoin of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health surveyed nine local health zones in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from November 2005 to November 2007 and reported 760 laboratory-confirmed cases of monkeypox. This makes the virus 20 times as common as it was when smallpox vaccination ceased in 1980. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study indicates that people born after the end of smallpox vaccinations are more likely to contract monkeypox, and vaccinated individuals are more than five times more likely to avoid infection. Researchers attribute high levels of infection among the Congolese to civil war, which has forced them to move into the forest and hunt wildlife; squirrels and monkeys are known hosts. There are concerns that monkeypox could enter the U.S. rodent population in a more virulent and efficient form, and to prevent the spread of the virus, Rimoin believes people need to be taught how to handle animals that could be infected and those carrying the virus need to be isolated. Other experts are calling for the development of a vaccine and effective antiviral treatments, along with animal importation policies.