The Los Angeles Department of Public Health reported that a person with a weakened immune system died of monkeypox. According to the health department, the CDC confirmed that the death was caused by a monkeypox infections.
According to the health department statement, the resident was gravely ill and had been hospitalized. Children younger than 8 years old, people with a history of eczema and people who are pregnant or breastfeeding are more likely to be affected by monkeypox than the general public.
Additional information on this case will not be made public. People who are severely immunocompromised are encouraged to seek medical care and treatment early and remain under the care of a provider during their illness.
The death of a L.A. resident may be the first case of monkeypox in the U.S. In August, the Texas Department of State Health Services reported a case of a severely immunocompromised person dying after being diagnosed with monkeypox, however, officials were still investigating what role monkeypox played in that death. The Los Angeles Times reported that officials hadn't said whether the death was caused by monkeypox.
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According to the CDC, as of Monday, nearly 58,000 cases of monkeypox had been reported worldwide, and about 57,500 of those cases had occurred in locations where monkeypox has not historically spread. More than 22,000 cases have been reported by the US alone, with 4,300 of them occurring in California, according to the agency.
There are at least 18 people who have died of monkeypox around the world. It's not clear if the death toll has been updated to reflect the death of the L.A. resident.
The current outbreak is caused by the clade II monkeypoxviruses, which are less deadly than other monkeypoxviruses. The West African clade has killed between 1% and 3.5% of people with the disease, while the clade I viruses have a case fatality rate of between 6% and 10%.
People who die of monkeypox may do so because of inflammation in the air sacs of the lungs or brain that develops as a result of the infections, according to a report. Sepsis, a life threatening immune reaction that causes widespread inflammation and organ damage, has been linked to other monkeypox deaths.
In the current monkeypox outbreak, doctors haven't been able to determine if all the people who died of the disease died of the same cause. It is possible that more data about each death will be made public or described in a research paper.
It was originally published on Live Science
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