Monkeypox Is a Sexually Transmitted Infection, and Knowing That Can Help Protect People

A clear picture of who is being affected by the recent outbreak of monkeypox is emerging as data comes in from around the world. Many of the cases in Europe Union, the US and the U.K. have been in men who are living with HIV.

Black and Latino men who have sex with men are most affected by mpX. This racial disparity will get worse if this dynamic is not fixed.

The thing is happening again. In Chicago, where I got a vaccine, most of the people in line were white. Gay men of means in the U.S. are traveling to Canada to get vaccinations, according to reports.

What did the result look like? White men who have sex with men are less likely to have MPX.

There is a surprising amount of conflict within institutions and in some circles about addressing the obvious paths of infections. It is not racist to name who is being affected. Rather than naming, researching, preventing and addressing how transmission is happening will keep people from understanding how to prevent infections, allow unneeded worry, and make health care more expensive.

There is enough evidence to study how this version of MPX may be transmitted, and why there is a particular risk among receptive sex partners.

The best way to report on and protect people during this health emergency is with a clearheaded review of the current literature.

I assumed that there was a sexual component to the outbreak when I read about it. I've never seen a virus that was connected to a single activity.

I started to think that MPX was a sexually transmitted disease. This wasn't controversial to me and I didn't think it would mean that MPX would only move sexually. For more than a decade, I have studied a variety of viruses categorized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as sexually transmitted infections, orSTIs, that have many modes of transmission.

Understanding how infections move sexually to research how they work and to prevent transmission is crucial.

In the past few months, there has been a backlash against naming MPX an STD out of the mistaken belief that it will increase stigma. Harris Solomon says that one of the reasons for the objection is how people in the U.S. treat sex. Many people think the risk of an action says something about a person because we often conflate sex with who you are. Sex is an important part of life, but it must be studied carefully to protect public health.

There is a belief that gay sex is so bad and shameful that it must not be talked about. This is anti-gay and intended as such.

In a study published in the British Medical Journal in July, it was found that gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men have an increased risk of contracting monkeypox. The very graphic photographs in the study showed how the variant of MPX that is different from the endemic virus that jumped from animals to humans in West and Central Africa has changed.

If a person had come into contact with the MPX virus on their hands, face, back and feet, they'd get a rash on their hands, face, back and feet. In the paper, the genital and perianal areas of the virus were shown to have different symptoms and may have been transmitted differently. Large numbers of straight people are not seeking medical attention out of embarrassment because of the symptoms shown in the photographs.

The new outbreak isn't completely new. Dimie Ogoina, a Nigerian doctor, told NPR that he had never seen a case of MPX before. He said that the patient had been bitten by another human. The outbreak consisted of young men who weren't handling animals. Many were presented with genitals. Although the role of sexual transmission of human monkeypox is not established, sexual transmission is plausible in some of these patients through close skin to skin contact. The global scientific community didn't listen to his warnings.

The case of sexual transmission has been strengthened by a study in the Lancet. The participants who reported anal-receptive sex were more likely to have early symptoms of skin diseases. One explanation is that anal sex can cause damage to the epithelium, a thin layer of tissue, and allow blood to enter at an early stage, which could lead to more infections. The authors state that there are questions about whether monkeypox is sexually transmitted via semen and vaginal secretions.

Sexually transmitted infections can be transmitted on the skin. Sex in general and gay sex in particular are hard to talk about in the U.S. The university where I work sent an e-mail and posted a message online that said Monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted disease nor is it related to sexual orientation.

The MSM community in the U.S. is not the only one affected by the virus. The data from the Georgia Department of Public was reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The same day the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported 122 cases of men having sex with men, it was also reported that 70% of them were black or african american.

I have been waiting to see how many vaccines have been given to black and white recipients.

Some people think a drug or vaccine will eliminate racial disparity. There is an inverse relationship between who is at risk and who gets vaccine. If it's not corrected, the racial health disparity will get worse, pooling the virus even more in what I call a " viral underclass."

Black men were three times more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS than white men, according to my research. The ratio went from six to one by the year 1996. In 2015, it had increased to nine to one. The reason for this is that in 1996 white gay men started getting HIV drugs. The disparity grew due to the fact that Black people did not get the drugs.

One way to better understand how MPX is moving is to test for it during routine STD screenings for men who have sex with men. Even though one of the men had a painful rash at the time of sampling, the researchers were able to identify the MPXV positive samples. A French study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that 13 of the 200 men it tested were positive for the sexually transmitted infections.

We need to find out why people with low levels of HIV are more likely to get MPX than people with high levels.

It's ironic that people should be hiding in subways because of the panic about MPX. One million Americans have died from the disease caused by the virus that is airborne. MPX, which is not airborne in the same way, has not yet killed an American.

The CDC does not include MPX on its list of sexually transmitted viruses. While 1 to 6 percent of cases of MPX in the US may be transmitted in other ways, 94 percent of infections are moving sexually among self-identified men who have sex with men. It is something to be addressed to protect people who deserve the dignity of a proactive campaign that centers our needs during a public health emergency.

The views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those ofScientific American.