He came to the hospital with a severe fever and confused consciousness
A 37-year-old man from Hong Kong was admitted to the Emergency and Casualty Department of Yan Chai Hospital on March 21 with high fever and reduced consciousness. The laboratory tests carried out established that the man’s symptoms were the result of an infection caused by the B virus discovered in 1932. Despite the treatment, the man’s condition continued to deteriorate, and on April 5 he was transferred to the hospital’s intensive care unit in critical condition.
Photo: Sakurai Midori / Wikimedia Commons
Since then, the Hong Kong Center for Health Protection (CHP) has not issued another statement about the condition of the patient infected with the B virus. As it turned out, the man, who was in good health, was killed by macaques living in the wild in the protected Kam Shan Country Park at the end of February ( Macaca fascicularis) were bitten, which are considered common especially on the height of the park called Monkey Hill. The common or Javan macaque living around Hong Kong is not a native but an introduced monkey species that spread in the southern China region due to its good adaptability.
It is rare but often fatal
The B-virus causes an infection with severe symptoms through zoonosis, i.e. spreading from animals to humans, which is also referred to as monkeypox, since the virus can be transferred to humans from wild monkeys – most often from the common macaque or Javan macaque native to Southeast Asia. In microbiology and medical literature Herpes simiae A virus with a scientific species name is a variant of human herpes that occurs in monkeys.
The virus can enter the human body through the bite of an animal.
Almost half of the fifty cases documented so far, a total of 21 infections, ended in death.
Photo: Isaac Lawrence/Getty Images
Although according to the currently accepted opinion in the literature, the virus cannot spread from one person to another, there is still a documented case where the patient was infected by a person with the B virus, not a monkey. According to a statement from Hong Kong’s health organization, the CHP, extended investigations are underway to detect possible additional infections. CHP officials advise hikers to avoid packs of wild monkeys and to avoid feeding or otherwise trying to lure the animals to them.
Monkeys are intermediate hosts of many dangerous viruses
The McHV-1 simian herpes virus is the only primate herpes virus that can infect humans. Herpesvirus is the collective name for pathogens belonging to the Herpesviridae family, which play a role in both animal and human diseases. Herpesviruses have double linear DNA strands and are icosahedral in shape.
Although monkey herpes virus infection is a very rare disease, its consequences can be extremely serious.
Based on the cases discovered so far, the mortality rate (fatal outcome) exceeds forty percent, and it causes severe encephalitis as a complication in almost the same proportion of survivors.
Photo: Scene Photo Library
Monkeys are known to be intermediate hosts of many pathogens and viruses. The HIV virus, which was identified in 1983 and is the cause of the dreaded and incurable disease AIDS, which spreads mainly through sex, could also have been transferred to humans from monkeys, according to historical research. But also a pathogen parasitizing monkeys, Orthopoxvirus A double-stranded DNA virus belonging to the genus also causes the dreaded monkeypox. Thousands of cases of the latter have already been identified, primarily in the West and Central African regions. Monkeypox was first identified outside of Africa in 2003 in the United States. Due to the development of tourism, you have to expect the spread of zoonotic virus infections to a much greater extent than in the past.
