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Review
. 2022 Aug 12;10(8):1633.
doi: 10.3390/microorganisms10081633.

Human Monkeypox: A Comprehensive Narrative Review and Analysis of the Public Health Implications

Francesco Di Gennaro  1 , Nicola Veronese  2 , Claudia Marotta  3 , Jae Il Shin  4 , Ai Koyanagi  5   6 , Andrea Silenzi  3 , Mario Antunes  7 , Annalisa Saracino  1 , Davide Fiore Bavaro  1 , Pinar Soysal  8 , Francesco Vladimiro Segala  1 , Laurie Butler  9 , Eugenio Milano  1 , Mario Barbagallo  2 , Yvonne Barnett  9 , Christopher Parris  9 , Emanuele Nicastri  10 , Damiano Pizzol  11 , Lee Smith  12
Affiliations
Review

Human Monkeypox: A Comprehensive Narrative Review and Analysis of the Public Health Implications

Francesco Di Gennaro et al. Microorganisms. .

Abstract

Recently, numerous cases of monkeypox were reported from several non-endemic countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania, suggesting an unusual and alarming public health issue, particularly considering that the disease is not directly related to human or animal travels. Attention is currently being drawn to this phenomenon since more than 70% of the global population is no longer vaccinated against smallpox. Indeed, the smallpox vaccination also confers some indirect degree of protection against other poxviruses, including monkeypox. We performed a narrative review to describe the existing literature with regard to monkeypox using the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Scopus databases. This review aims to provide updated evidence of findings on the epidemiology, clinical features, diagnosis, management, and prevention of monkeypox, also considering the concurrent zoonotic pandemic caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.

Keywords: epidemiology; monkeypox (MPX); smallpox; zoonotic pandemic.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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