New Research Points to Sex Between Men Fueling Monkeypox Outbreak
The New England Journal of Medicine found the virus in the seminal fluid in 29 of 32 tested samples.
New research points to sex between men as the primary mode of transmission fueling the global monkeypox outbreak.
It turns out that claims that skin contact is probably much less of a risk factor.
Studies in several journals have been published in recent weeks, which offer a great deal of insight into the various ways a recent strain of monkeypox virus is transmitted, including findings and data published in:
- An article from The Lancet.
- An article from the New England Journal of Medicine studying cases in 16 countries.
- An investigation from the UK Health Security Agency.
- Surveillance from the European Center for Disease Prevention.
Correct identification of the mode of transmission is critical in determining the proper set of precautions to promote to stop the spread of the disease.
A growing body of evidence supports that sexual transmission, particularly through seminal fluids, is occurring with the current MPX outbreak,” said Dr. Aniruddha Hazra, medical director of the University of Chicago Sexual Wellness Clinic, referring to monkeypox and to recent studies that found the virus in semen.
Consequently, scientists told NBC News that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities should update their monkeypox communication strategies to more strongly emphasize the centrality of intercourse among gay and bisexual men, who comprise nearly all U.S. cases, to the virus’ spread.
On Aug. 14, Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious disease physician at the University of Southern California, and Dr. Lao-Tzu Allan-Blitz, a resident physician in global health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, published an essay on Medium in which they reviewed the science supporting the argument that during the current outbreak, monkeypox is largely transmitting through anal and oral intercourse between men.
“It looks very clear to us that this is an infection that is transmitting sexually the vast majority of the time,” Allan-Blitz said.
Proctitis, an inflammation in the lining of the rectum, was more likely in individuals who reported anal receptive sex, while nearly all of those who presented with ulcerative tonsillitis reported oral receptive sex, found Oriol Mitjà, PhD, of University Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol in Badalona, Spain, and colleagues in a study published in The Lancet.
“Lesion swabs showed the highest viral loads, which, combined with the history of sexual exposure and the distribution of lesions, suggests close contact is probably the dominant transmission route in the current outbreak,” the group wrote.
The findings were consistent with a viral load more than three orders of magnitude higher in lesion samples than in respiratory samples.
“Strikingly higher viral loads in lesion swabs than in pharyngeal swabs should be further investigated to guide the decision on whether respiratory transmission is relevant and respiratory isolation at home is necessary,” the researchers added.
Their study enrolled 181 human monkeypox virus-infected patients from three sexual health clinics in Madrid and Barcelona. Of these patients, 166 identified as gay, bisexual, or men who had sex with men (MSM), and 15 identified as heterosexual men or heterosexual women.
The New England Journal of Medicine found the virus in the seminal fluid in 29 of 32 tested samples, and a previous smallpox vaccination was not 100% preventative.
That study reported complications such as conjunctival lesions, acute kidney injury, and a self-limiting myocarditis, which were not observed by the researchers in Spain.
Mitjà and co-authors noted that 32 individuals in their cohort (18%) acquired monkeypox infection despite a smallpox vaccination history, which “warrants further investigation to better understand the protection provided by vaccination in the context of the current outbreak.”
Limitations of the study included no testing of other bodily fluids such as blood and semen, “although it is still unclear whether these bodily fluids contribute to monkeypox virus transmission,” [Dimie Ogoina, MD, of the Niger Delta Teaching Hospital in Bayelsa, Nigeria] pointed out.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
So when we read about children and dogs getting it?…
Exactly. But don’t expect the mainstream media to say a peep about that, because “stigmatization.”
“New research points to sex between men as the primary mode of transmission fueling the global monkeypox outbreak.”
DON’T SAY GAY!
I’d like to believe that authorities are asking those same questions, but you never know these days.
We actually have a dog story. Apparently two homosexual men in an open relationship both have it, open sores and all, and their dog sleeps with them every night. So things to avoid.
1.) Open relationships.
2.) Sleeping with your pets, especially when you have open sores.
3.) Being a complete and total dumb ass.
Actually #3 deserves a extra Bonus Point ^
I saw an article last week about a gay couple who had it, as well as their dog. Around it’s anus. So, will they be prosecuted for bestiality or is that in the growing letter salad now?
Well, in all honesty, alien based probing clearly is a transmission method and probably the most reliable but I haven’t seen anything saying it was the ONLY method possible.
I would like to think the animals and children got through other transmission methods but…
It is my understanding from what I have read, and I am willing to be corrected, that the children, one baby, and those household pets who were infected were all under the care of [forbidden word] men. The universe of those infected is small enough at this point where contact tracing is still barely possible.
Fortunately, as far as I know it is not a fatal disease, and has a limited time span it infects. I do not know about reinfections.
Subotai Bahadur
In 2003, there was an outbreak of monkeypox in the US, tied to a batch of imported pet rodents from Africa. So we know that transmission from pets to humans is not unusual. Of course, that outbreak petered out after 46 cases, so it never became a mechanism for sustained spread.
Watch the media and other reality challenged people fall all over themselves trying to tell this without telling this basic fact that most people already know.
ShockedPikachuFace.JPG
Anything spread by male-male sex gets lots of chances to spread. Involving women makes spreading slow down a lot.
MAD magazine had a planet with 26 sexes, a growing crowd going from bar to bar trying to pick up the necessary assortment. They’re stuck trying find a mu. “Mu’s are so stand-offish.” They discuss going to a mu-house.
No monkeypox there.
“Involving women makes spreading slow down a lot.”
I am not a reproductive biologist, but… knowing that nature tends to provision organs susceptible to external infiltration with defensive constructs (nose hairs, ear wax, stomach acids) I have to wonder whether the vaginal area is equipped with natural defenses against bacteriological/viral contamination that the large colon doesn’t share.
Article headline is not wrong, but the findings are that it is present in semen and can be sexually transmitted by males. That means it can be transmitted to both sexes. However, the epicenter effect is such that the initial patients were either gay or bisexual making mate selection a spread factor. Since it spreads slowly, far slower than anything like COVID, that epicenter effect will persist for a long time.
Clearly, it can spread to more than just gay males through sex. It can also spread from heavy droplets (but these have to be passed very close from one person to another’s mucous membranes: eyes, mouth, etc.) and direct contact with pustule/lesion runoff.
These things aren’t political….must we try and politicize every virus now?
No one said anything political.
Have you seen these boards surrounding monkeypox?
And of course the left is also very, very guilty.
-Attempting to rename it because somehow monkeypox is “hurtful”
-Pushing the climate change and disease spread angle
You were the first to bring up politics on this particular thread.
Yes I was…specifically to suggest by lamentation that we NOT continue in the politicization of issues where it shouldn’t be happening.
What’s your point?
You’re kind of missing the point. From a public health standpoint, most of this stuff in terms of disease spreading is dealt with behaviorally. Yes, semen is a vector, which the MSM and medical establishment, at least up until now, had been flatly denying in its typical Orwellian manner. However, it is the BEHAVIOR of the people that is creating the most risk, NOT the biological mode of transmission. In other words, the more sausage you take in whatever orifice, the more risk.
Your last statement makes the point that the headline doesn’t make….you didn’t miss the point, but the article headline buries that broader point. I get it, headlines aren’t perfect or even complete…the problem is, too many people only read headlines.
I’m not sure I remember anyone, even among the worst of the MSM propagandists, flatly denying that sex between any 2 or more partners, gay or straight, contributed to spread. If I’m incorrect, please point out examples. And I don’t count the blogosphere as MSM (in other words, the hacks at vox, buzzfeed, et al. can go fuck themselves and get monkeypox while doing so)
I remember it. They were saying the virus is NOT found in semen, and therefore monkeypox is NOT an STD. Oh, yes, I read that, and I responded that the disease vector was not gay sex per se, but orgy festivals.
Herpes didn’t start out as an STD, but it got turned into one. Herpes Simplex I was a cold sore on the mouth, and Herpes Simplex II was the STD. They were the same virus, the only difference being the location.
Gay loudmouths have a long history of converting public health issues into political issues, and then insisting on bad public policy, because gays are involved. The result with HIV was excess deaths among gays. I don’t know why gay loudmouths hate other gay people so much.
Well, this sounds like an easily testable hypothesis. It should result in two epicenters: gay males and female prostitutes. Is anyone looking for a corresponding increase in strumpiepox or junkiepox?
It’s not just an epicenter effect. It’s been in the heterosexual population before and it just petered out, basically failed to spread beyond households. There have been a few heterosexuals affected in this outbreak and yet there are no signs of it spreading more broadly in the straight population. Clearly there something different with the sexual networks of gay men, and the smart money is that it has to do with the number and partners.
Are any of these men getting pregnant?
Sounds like this could be a case where social distancing really would be effective.
The number of gay men that can have anal sex with a partner six feet away is probably a small number.
Unless they have elephantitis of the genitals. Then, it would be no mean feat.
Great. Meanwhile when I see that 98% of new cases are among homosexual men I wonder why research is even necessary.
Well, there’s got to be at least a 2% margin of error, right? So probably 100% are engaging in risky sex practices, or live in close quarters with a person engaging in those kinds of practices. Or just not owning up to being fans of Jimmy Dean pork sausages.
Rather, James Deen.
Extensive time- and money-consuming research is necessary to refute lies being told by Democrats, which took them maybe twelve seconds total to think up before spreading them all over free media.
We won’t make any headway on this until we forsake long-term research to refuse Democrat lies and respond instead with straightforward, efficient lynchings. Then, and only then, the tide might turn in favor of rationality.
I just don’t get it. I just don’t see what could possibly be risky about getting pounded in the tush by numerous strange men. Who would have ever thought you could possibly be exposed to loathsome diseases that way? Oh well I’m a huge skeptic but I guess we are supposed to believe the science, right?
Will they trust the science?
Well I guess now we have to LOCK DOWN EVERYONE for two years and re-destroy the economy because LOCKING DOWN sausage-crazed gay men who find delight in probing numerous strange manholes would be….homophobic. And we can’t have THAT, can we.
And yet there are exceptions. A friend of a friend has it, despite not having had sex in several years, or been intimate enough with anyone for it to be obvious where he got it. He’s a bank teller and is convinced he got it from counting money that had been handled by an infected person. That doesn’t sound likely to me, but it had to be something.
Bwahahaha. So, a friend of a friend doesn’t know how he got it? Maybe from sitting on a public toilet seat? Hasn’t had sex in several years? Sure, bro. Maybe the bank teller is just on the down low. Maybe not. Maybe he’s a literal monkeyfugger and that’s how he caught it? I know which way I’d bet.
My friend tells me this guy is not a liar, and I know my friend is not a liar. You don’t know me or either of them, so what do you know? Where do you get off calling anyone a liar without evidence?
With 98% of cases spread through gay sex and zero known cases of transmission on banknotes, any rational person would consider that somebody is lying. That’s *especially* true if the people making the claim are strangers whose integrity we have no reason to trust.
You’re irrational. Did I actually call anyone “a liar”? No, I didn’t. Next irrational statement on your part–“without evidence.” You have provided “evidence” of absolutely nothing. Your anecdote could be entirely fabricated–by your friend; by the friend of the friend who supposedly got the monkey pox he knows not how; or by “milhouse.” Usually, when some anonymous bozo on the internet says “a friend told me this”, the bozo is telling a story about himself. (Famous Ann Landers/Dear Abby trope–“Dear Abby, my “friend” told me her husband is cheating on her–what should she do? etc.” ) So, my conclusion is that “milhouse” himself caught monkey pox, is on the down low, and should stop sticking his you know what in festering diseased whatevers as his recreation of choice.
The Democrats will love that, if proven. Transmission on currency. That will let them ban cash.
Transmitted primarily through digestive intercourse in socially liberal males, children, and animals. This is only a political issue so far as political congruence (“=”) and #NoJudgment #NoLabels is concerned.
Can’t the CDC just tell gays to stop having sex with strangers for two weeks to “stop the spread?”
Most likely it’s not even a large proportion of gays who are at that much risk, but just the subset who are highly promiscuous–i.e. they indulge in gay orgies. (Ick. I can’t imagine the SMELL.)
We knew it was spreading among the gay population weeks, if not months, ago.
Absolutely accurate… but it’s necessary for American society to have a scholarly group report the facts that we already know, again and again, in a new and different study, every several months or so, in order to justify our government’s response of never doing fuck-all about any of it.
The CDC wants monkeypox to spread into the general population, but so far it isn’t happening.
Would this be considered a political statement?
Or is it a supposition based on the recent CDC which, without out right declaration, has owned up to how badly they handled Covid with same like assumptions based on what? For it wasn’t the science.