Articles related to OUTBREAKS

A detailed summarization of the clinical presentation of 197 individuals with PCR-confirmed diagnosis of monkeypox in the UK. The summary documents a highly variable prodrome in terms of prodromal symptoms and timing to eruption of visible lesions. Systemic illness was seen in 86% of patients. After mucocutaneous lesions, seen in 100% of patients, fever was the next most common manifestation, seen in 62% of patients.

“The original misnomer for HIV—gay-related immune deficiency (GRID)—looms large in the consciousness of many gay men and offers a cautionary lesson for monkeypox and other infectious disease outbreaks.”

Burkholderia pseudomallei bacteria showed up in four patients in Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas in 2021, despite the bacterium typically associated with travel to tropical and subtropical areas like Thailand and Malaysia. The case was cracked when researchers found an essential oil spray that contained B. pseudomallei in the home of a 4-year-old boy who died from complications of the melioidosis outbreak.

Monkeypox has never before appeared more or less simultaneously across different countries and now continents. So this current outbreak is both puzzling and concerning public health workers. Unlike the previous cases discovered outside Africa, the current outbreaks have occurred in people with no travel history, suggesting that human-to-human transmission is driving the spread. And in the current outbreak, the illness appears to be presenting atypically, without its normal prodrome. Read more about the hypothesized connection with smallpox eradication, available vaccinations, and public health response from the outbreak.

Monkeypox is again spreading around the world, from Europe to North America. This is the first outbreak in US the since 2003 and the disease is now spreading fairly rapidly on a daily basis. Transmission between people mostly occurs through large respiratory droplets, normally meaning prolonged contact face to face. But the virus can also spread through bodily fluids. The latest cases have mainly been among men who have sex with men. Currently, the UK has the largest number of diagnosed cases, followed by Portugal, Canada, and Spain. Latest case counts by country can be seen here.