Pekar Jonathan E, Wang Yu, Wang Jade C, Shao Yucai, Taki Faten, Forgione Lisa A, Amin Helly, Clabby Tyler, Johnson Kimberly, Torian Lucia V, Braunstein Sarah L, Pathela Preeti, Omoregie Enoma, Hughes Scott, Suchard Marc A, Vasylyeva Tetyana I, Lemey Philippe, Wertheim Joel O
Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Graduate Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Nat Med. 2025 May;31(5):1464-1473. doi: 10.1038/s41591-025-03526-9. Epub 2025 Mar 25.
The 2022 global mpox epidemic was caused by transmission of MPXV clade IIb, lineage B.1 through sexual contact networks, with New York City (NYC) experiencing the first and largest outbreak in the United States. By performing phylogeographic analysis of MPXV genomes sampled from 757 individuals in NYC between April 2022 and April 2023, and 3,287 MPXV genomes sampled around the world, we identify over 200 introductions of MPXV into NYC with at least 84 leading to onward transmission. These infections primarily occurred among men who have sex with men, transgender women and nonbinary individuals. Through a comparative analysis with HIV in NYC, we find that both MPXV and HIV genomic cluster sizes are best fit by scale-free distributions, and that people in MPXV clusters are more likely to have previously received an HIV diagnosis and be a member of a recently growing HIV transmission cluster. We model MPXV transmission through sexual contact networks and show that highly connected individuals would be disproportionately infected at the start of an epidemic, which would likely result in the exhaustion of the most densely connected parts of the network, and, therefore, explain the rapid expansion and decline of the NYC outbreak. By coupling the genomic epidemiology of MPXV and HIV with epidemic modeling, we demonstrate that the transmission dynamics of MPXV in NYC can be understood by general principles of sexually transmitted pathogens.
2022年全球猴痘疫情是由MPXV进化枝IIb、谱系B.1通过性接触网络传播引起的，纽约市经历了美国首例也是规模最大的疫情爆发。通过对2022年4月至2023年4月期间从纽约市757名个体中采集的MPXV基因组以及从世界各地采集的3287个MPXV基因组进行系统地理学分析，我们确定有超过200次MPXV传入纽约市，其中至少84次导致了进一步传播。这些感染主要发生在男男性行为者、跨性别女性和非二元性别人群中。通过与纽约市的艾滋病毒进行比较分析，我们发现MPXV和艾滋病毒的基因组簇大小都最符合无标度分布，并且MPXV簇中的人更有可能先前被诊断出感染艾滋病毒，并且是最近增长的艾滋病毒传播簇的成员。我们对通过性接触网络传播的MPXV进行建模，结果表明在疫情开始时，高度连接的个体感染比例过高，这可能会导致网络中连接最密集的部分耗尽，从而解释了纽约市疫情的迅速蔓延和下降。通过将MPXV和艾滋病毒的基因组流行病学与疫情建模相结合，我们证明MPXV在纽约市的传播动态可以通过性传播病原体的一般原理来理解。
