NEW DELHI: A new investigation into the virus strain, known as Clada La that causes mpox, has indicated that it might readily be spreading from person to person. The development could further hamper the efforts to halt the spread of the disease in Central Africa surging infections over the past year. Researchers are wondering over what is causing the rapid proliferation of the virus among the human population. 

Although smallpox was eradicated in 1980, scientists always believed that the threat of poxviruses was never really gone. Mpox has been of particular concern to the scientists, among many that exist today. In fact, the World Health Assembly's post-eradication policies mentions it–“continuation of monkeypox surveillance in West and Central Africa, at least until 1985.”

In 2022-23, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the global Mpox outbreak a ‘public health emergency of international concern’. In August 2024, the WHO declared Mpox to be a public health emergency for the second time in two years.

In 2022, the WHO designated 'Mpox' a preferred synonym of 'monkeypox' disease. According to the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses, the virus is called 'monkeypox'. For the sake of uniformity, the 'Mpox' refers to both the disease and the virus clades. 

The WHO declaration was aimed at encouraging multiple countries to pledge vaccines to the 15 African nations affected by the outbreak; six of the nations had not reported a single Mpox case before. The paucity of doses forced countries to prioritise their campaigns. Before the vaccination begins for two months, scientists have a new cause of worry. On October 24, scientists uploaded a preprint paper on Virologica, reporting evidence that another mpox virus appeared to have achieved human-to-human transmission.

There are two mpox clades; I and II. Clade I viruses were shown to cause more severe disease in the mouse model, however, this might not be true for humans. Both clades offer two subclades; making it four known variants: Ia, Ib, IIa, and IIb. The 2022 outbreak happened due to clade IIb and is still there in certain parts of America. Clade Ib, the primary cause of affection in central Africa, is discovered towards the end of 2023.

Researchers believe that these two clades are key reasons behind the mpox problem. They know very little about clade lla except the fact that it causes infection in western Africa. 

The oldest variant is Clade Ia causing sporadic infections in humans, especially among children. The infection is limited to a few families or communities and the transmission is always from animals to humans. There was no proof of sustained human-to-human transmission, until recently. 

There is now proof that the DNA of clade Ia viruses sequenced from the present outbreak indicates signs of human-to-human transmission, according to the preprint posted on Virologica.

The rate at which the polymerases make mutations is different for different viruses. Generally, viruses have RNA as their genetic material like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and influenza making mistakes more frequently than those that have been DNA, like the human papillomavirus (HPV) and adenoviruses. 

The DNA viruses, like the members of the pox family, have a low error rate following the error correction mechanism built into them. This mechanism is called proofreading, ensuring low mistakes, like one mistake every three years in a circulating viral strain.

Health officials use genomic-sequencing tools to track the outbreak. Mbala and his colleagues sequenced virus samples from infections in Kinshasa. They found patterns in the samples of both the clade Ia and Ib virus, forming a pattern of single-letter genetic mutations inactive in the ongoing battle between the human immune system and the virus and would likely appear unless human-to-human spread. 

The pattern was not showing up in the report posted to a preprint server in August. A team sequenced clade la virus samples collected between 2018 and 2024. The researchers did not spot the pattern suggesting that it might be a recent development. A virologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, who collaborates with Mbala and co-authored the August preprint as well, said, “We didn’t pick up on strong signs of evolution.”  

“But in Kinshasa, it seems that there is something unique going on,” he added.