New Delhi: A study conducted in the UK on seven patients who were cured of the rare infectious disease monkeypox between 2018 and 2021 has shown that some antiviral drugs may have the ability to reduce the symptoms of monkeypox and the duration of the patient’s infection. can. According to the study published on Tuesday in the journal ‘The Lancet Infectious Disease’, the cases analyzed are from outside Africa. The research also reported patient response to the first experimental use of two different antiviral drugs — brincidofovir and tecovirimat — to treat the disease.
The study found little evidence of clinical benefit from brincidofovir, but also concluded that further research would be needed to investigate the potential of tecovirimat. Researchers also report the detection of the monkeypox virus in the blood and saliva of the mouth. The researchers said that better infection control and treatment strategies for the disease have not yet been established, so the study data could aid global efforts to further understand the clinical characteristics of the disease as well as the trend of infection.
Hugh Adler, from Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK, said, “Health officials are trying to understand what caused the May 2022 outbreak of monkeypox in Europe and North America. The disease has affected many people who have neither traveled anywhere nor come in contact with a previously known case. Our study offers some perspective on the use of antiviral drugs to treat monkeypox in humans.”
Adler, the lead author of the research, said: “This new outbreak has affected more patients in the UK than before, whereas monkeypox has not previously been transmitted rapidly among people, so there is a need for overall public health.” Its risks are low.” Nick Price, a senior research scholar at the Guys and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, said public health officials and health workers around the world should be alert to the potential for new cases of monkeypox as international travel returns to pre-Covid status.
Of the seven monkeypox patients studied in Britain, four had come from West Africa and three of these patients had also come in contact with an infected person. Monkeypox, a virus thought to be a close relative of the smallpox virus, is a rare disease classified by the UK Health Protection Agency as a High Outcome Infectious Disease (HCID). There is currently no official treatment for monkeypox, and data on the duration of infection are limited, while the duration of the spread of infection ranges from five to 21 days.
