The monkeypox virus can potentially be transmitted even when people have no symptoms. That would have a major impact on the further spread of the virus.
Monkeypox has been spreading in Europe since May. According to the Robert Koch Institute, 3266 people have been infected with the virus in Germany so far. The virus is transmitted through close physical contact. Smallpox on the skin in particular is highly infectious. In a study from France, the virus has now been detected in men who had no lesions on the skin and reported no other symptoms. Means: monkeypox can possibly also be transmitted asymptomatically.
In France, men who have sex with men are advised to get tested regularly for the STDs gonorrhea and chlamydia. A directive in France requires HIV-infected people and those who take HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis – people do this if they want to protect themselves from possible HIV infection after a risky contact – to be tested for the two sexually transmitted diseases every three months.
Monkeypox virus detected in 13 people without symptoms
Researchers led by Charlotte Charpentier from Hôpital Bichat-Claude evaluated the anal swabs of 200 people whose test was negative for gonorrhea and chlamydia and in whom doctors did not find any anal lesions. Also, none of the subjects reported symptoms such as smallpox or fever that occur with monkeypox infection at the time of the smear test.
A PCR test for the monkeypox virus was positive in 13 people. Two of the subjects contracted monkeypox a few days after the first swab. In one of the two subjects, a low Ct value was noticed in the asymptomatic phase. The Ct value provides information about how high the virus concentration is in a person. A low value means a high virus concentration and indicates a higher infectivity.
The positive PCR test in the 13 subjects does not mean that these people can also transmit the monkeypox virus to other people. But the findings of the study raise the question of whether asymptomatic transmission of monkeypox is possible.
Asymptomatic transmission would change everything
Doctor Dimie Ogoina, who heads the Niger Delta University Hospital, has been pondering this question for a long time. He told Insider that he recently treated a monkeypox patient at his clinic who didn’t develop an ulcer, fever or rash during a sexual relationship. It was only “after the sexual relationship that he noticed a genital rash,” Ogoina said. “Five days later, his sexual partner also noticed a genital rash.”
It is not yet clear whether monkeypox can also be transmitted asymptomatically. But what we do know: The monkeypox virus can also be transmitted in the phase when only fever, headache or muscle pain occur, but no smallpox, as Clemens Wendtner, chief physician for infectiology and tropical medicine at the Schwabing Clinic dem star explained in the interview. Monkeypox has already been detected in bodily fluids such as semen. “It’s not necessarily uncommon to see virus particles in body fluids — that doesn’t mean they’re capable of replication and can cause disease,” Dimie Ogoina said.
Further research is needed to know whether monkeypox can also be transmitted asymptomatically. If people who don’t have a fever, headache, muscle pain or skin lesions could also transmit the virus, it would “change everything,” said Dimie Ogoina.
The researchers of the French study write that in the case of asymptomatic transmission of monkeypox, it is not sufficient that only people who have been in contact with a known case of monkeypox are vaccinated to contain the outbreak.
Sources: I
Source: Stern
