“The expansion of this virus is concerning. Viruses don’t have passports. They don’t respect international borders. We need to get things under control,” said team member Dr. Jason Kindrachuk, UM Canada Research Chair in molecular pathogenesis of emerging viruses and associate professor of medical microbiology and infectious diseases at the Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.

Dr. Jason Kindrachuk

One of the research team’s studies – featured on the cover of the prestigious journal The Lancet earlier this year – analyzed 13 years of data and found that mpox has expanded to nearly every region of the DRC. The number of provinces reporting cases has increased from 18 of 26 in 2010 to 24 of 26 in 2023. 

“The spread of mpox has changed rapidly over the last couple of years. Cases had been fairly focused within specific regions that were largely rural. Now mpox is a much broader problem across most of the DRC in both urban and rural locations,” said Kindrachuk, an international leader in mpox research who travels regularly to Africa.

Until 2023, Kindrachuk said that most mpox cases were linked to people having contact with wildlife, most likely rodents. The virus also had the greatest negative impact on those under 15 years old, he said.

In a second study published earlier this year in The Lancet, the researchers observed something different in the province of South Kivu. They saw the emergence of a new type of mpox virus, called subclade Ib, which shifted towards sustained human-to-human transmission and an increase in cases among people aged 15 to 34 years old. 

Kindrachuk, also a researcher with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, said that among those adults, they had high number of skin and genital lesions, which give the researchers a stronger indication that the cases are likely related to sexual contact. He said many of the people identified as sex workers or those who partake in sex work. 

The study also found that the overall disease severity was relatively low in South Kivu. They saw two deaths out of 403 hospitalized patients – a fatality rate of less than one per cent. 

“The reality is that what we were seeing in South Kivu amongst those cases was actually different than what we’ve seen historically,” Kindrachuk said. 

Looking back in the past, he said there typically weren’t many mpox cases in Kinshasa, the capital of DRC with a population of 17 million. This also changed.

“It’s concerning because our research that was published last week in The Lancet shows that it’s spreading in Kinshasa. This becomes an even bigger predicament in terms of response efforts because you’re not only dealing with spread across the majority of the country, but you also now have it embedded in this very large metropolis that is a major network for many other countries in Africa,” Kindrachuk said. 

In a fourth study published in the prestigious publication The New England Journal of Medicine in June, the research team found that in three women, mpox was transmitted between mother and baby in utero, resulting in pregnancy loss or infection. The findings support the significance of preventive interventions, including vaccinations, in pregnant individuals, Kindrachuk said.

“We now need to conduct large-scale studies to better understand the outcomes associated with mpox in pregnancy and to help guide clinical management,” he said.

“For us, the complexity is increasing, but all the data that we are identifying in our studies helps inform our response and certainly the actions of other international individuals, organizations and the Congolese on the ground who are leading the response efforts.”

The case comes days after U.S. health officials confirmed the first case of clade 1 mpox in the country, which was found in a person who recently returned to California from a trip to eastern Africa.

“The unfortunate reality is we knew we were going to see cases here (in Canada),” Kindrachuk said. “Winnipeg is the first and likely not the last unfortunately.”

To read the full article, please follow the link here with Global News. 

To read the full article, please visit Nature. 

Dr. Jason Kindrachuk, associate professor of medical microbiology and infectious diseases in UM’s Max Rady College of Medicine and Canada Research Chair in molecular pathogenesis of emerging viruses, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”

But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”

To read the full story, please visit CTV News. 

Even when not fatal, mpox can trigger fevers, aches and painful fluid-filled skin lesions.

To read the full article, please visit Scientific American.

And it’s particularly difficult to monitor the virus in expansive rural regions and amid ongoing conflict in DRC, he says. “There’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all approach that’s going to be able to control this.”

To read the full article, please visit NPR.

“We’re seeing evolutionary changes within the virus that’s suggestive of increased human transmission… and we’re seeing the changing demographics in this one specific region of Congo,” said Dr. Jason Kindrachuk, an associate professor in infectious disease at the University of Manitoba in Canada and co-author of the paper.

“This is very important, because it’s suggestive of a change in the epidemiology [distribution] of the disease,” he told the Telegraph. 

To read the full story with Dr. Kindrachuk, please visit The Telegraph.