Monkeypox is mutating fast

New research suggests that monkeypox is mutating surprisingly fast in Europe and North America. The study shows how little we know about the virus. The monkeypox virus spreading across the U.S, Europe and the UK is mutating surprisingly fast, according to a study conducted by Portuguese researchers and published in the journal Nature Medicine. The study offers the most in-depth look at the genetic make-up of the virus so far. Scientists sequence virus genomes because the genome is the virus playbook the genome is the genetic material of an organism, and in the case of a virus, it tells us what the virus is, what is does and how it is likely to spread.

Monkeypox mutated 50 times since 2018

In the study in Portugal, the researchers took samples from 15 monkeypox patients and compared the genomes of the virus that had infected them. The researchers found that the patients each had a strain of monkeypox that could be traced back to a previous outbreak of the virus in 2018-2019 in the UK, Israel and Singapore and which had originated in Nigeria. But more than that, their tests showed that the virus had mutated 50 times up to 12 times more than they would have expected since that previous outbreak in 2018. This data completely challenges what is known about the mutation rate of monkeypox, said study author João Paulo Gomes, a researcher at Portugal’s National Institute of Health.

West African monkeypox has lower death rates

There are a few things we know about monkeypox and this new genome sequencing has helped researchers understand the current outbreak better. First, the strain of the virus in the current outbreak is mutating at an unusually fast rate. Second, the outbreak probably started with a single case infecting others at a large super-spreader event. The strain is part of the West African clade of monkeypox, which is commonly reported in western Cameroon and Sierra Leone and carries a less than 1% mortality rate. A clade is defined as a group of organisms that can be traced back to common ancestors or a common genetic lineage. There is another common clade of monkeypox known as the Central African clade, which is more present in the Congo basin and sees death rates of up to 10%.

The monkeypox incubation period makes it hard to track

There is also a lot more we don’t know about monkeypox in this current outbreak. Its incubation period, which ranges from five to 21 days, makes its movement hard to track. The World Health Organization has identified a so-called index case the first confirmed case as one that traveled from Nigeria to the USA in early May. But the researchers in Portugal dispute that idea because, they say, there were confirmed cases in Portugal and the UK already in late April. If the researchers in Portugal are correct, we know less than we thought about the current outbreak, such as how it has evolved and what it is likely to do next.

So, where did the monkeypox outbreak start?

The scientists write in their study paper that it is very likely the virus was imported from a country where monkeypox is endemic, such as Nigeria, but they also say that they cannot rule out other possibilities. They say it is also possible, for example, that the virus spread silently through humans and/or other animals in non-endemic countries, like the UK or Singapore, after the 2018-2019 outbreak.

And, they say, it’s unclear whether the mutated version is any worse than the original version. The authors describe an unexpectedly high number of mutations in the virus, but their implications for disease severity or transmissibility are unclear, said Hugh Adler, a researcher at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, in response to the paper. He was not involved with the research. We have not identified any change in the severity of clinical disease in patients diagnosed in the current outbreak, said Adler, who has worked with monkeypox patients in the UK during previous outbreaks.

Monkeypox research is still in its infancy Monkeypox is a double stranded DNA zoonotic virus. DNA viruses mutate slower than RNA viruses, such as the one that causes COVID-19. But we generally lack a lot of knowledge about monkeypox. The researchers in Portugal, for instance, cite only a single other study on the genetics of the virus. Adler says the study of the virus genetics is still in its infancy. We have the genome sequence, so we have an idea of what the genes are, said Adler. But in terms of really understanding what they do and the implications for evolution, if the genes change there’s very little research done on that compared to a lot of the other big viruses that we know. Adler said the research by João Paulo Gomes’s team in Portugal had provided fascinating new insights into the biology of monkeypox, but Adler noted that it looked like the study had only occurred because of the virus’s current spread in hgh-income countries. As ever, if the global community had applied these same scientific resources to [previous] monkeypox outbreaks in Africa, we might already have a stronger knowledge base, Adler said. Monkeyox was first discovered in a monkey in 1958 and the first human case was found in a small child in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.