Department of Clinical Sciences, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium.
Laboratory of Medical Microbiology, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
Nat Med. 2022 Nov;28(11):2288-2292. doi: 10.1038/s41591-022-02004-w. Epub 2022 Aug 12.
The magnitude of the 2022 multi-country monkeypox virus (MPXV) outbreak has surpassed any preceding outbreak. It is unclear whether asymptomatic or otherwise undiagnosed infections are fuelling this epidemic. In this study, we aimed to assess whether undiagnosed infections occurred among men attending a Belgian sexual health clinic in May 2022. We retrospectively screened 224 samples collected for gonorrhea and chlamydia testing using an MPXV PCR assay and identified MPXV-DNA-positive samples from four men. At the time of sampling, one man had a painful rash, and three men had reported no symptoms. Upon clinical examination 21-37 days later, these three men were free of clinical signs, and they reported not having experienced any symptoms. Serology confirmed MPXV exposure in all three men, and MPXV was cultured from two cases. These findings show that certain cases of monkeypox remain undiagnosed and suggest that testing and quarantining of individuals reporting symptoms may not suffice to contain the outbreak.
2022 年多国猴痘病毒（MPXV）疫情的规模超过了以往任何一次疫情。目前尚不清楚无症状或未被诊断的感染是否助长了这一疫情。在这项研究中，我们旨在评估 2022 年 5 月在比利时一家性健康诊所就诊的男性中是否发生了未被诊断的感染。我们回顾性地筛选了 224 份用于淋病和衣原体检测的样本，使用猴痘病毒 PCR 检测，从四名男性中鉴定出猴痘病毒-DNA 阳性样本。在采样时，一名男性出现疼痛性皮疹，三名男性报告无症状。21-37 天后进行临床检查时，这三名男性没有临床症状，他们报告没有任何症状。血清学检测证实了这三名男性都有猴痘病毒暴露，其中两例培养出了猴痘病毒。这些发现表明，某些猴痘病例仍未被诊断，并表明对报告症状的个体进行检测和隔离可能不足以控制疫情。
