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Subject: Science and Technology

  • What is the West Nile Virus?

    The Kerala health department is on alert after the death occurred due to the West Nile Virus.

    West Nile Virus

    • The West Nile Virus is a mosquito-borne, single-stranded RNA virus.
    • According to the WHO, it is a member of the flavivirus genus and belongs to the Japanese Encephalitis antigenic complex of the family Flaviviridae.

    How does it spread?

    • Culex species of mosquitoes act as the principal vectors for transmission.
    • It is transmitted by infected mosquitoes between and among humans and animals, including birds, which are the reservoir host of the virus.
    • Mosquitoes become infected when they feed on infected birds, which circulate the virus in their blood for a few days.
    • The virus eventually gets into the mosquito’s salivary glands.
    • During later blood meals (when mosquitoes bite), the virus may be injected into humans and animals, where it can multiply and possibly cause illness.
    • WNV can also spread through blood transfusion, from an infected mother to her child, or through exposure to the virus in laboratories.
    • It is not known to spread by contact with infected humans or animals.

    Symptoms of WNV infection

    • The disease is asymptomatic in 80% of the infected people.
    • The rest develop what is called the West Nile fever or severe West Nile disease.
    • In these 20% cases, the symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, body aches, nausea, rash, and swollen glands.
    • Severe infection can lead to encephalitis, meningitis, paralysis, and even death.
    • It is estimated that approximately 1 in 150 persons infected with the West Nile Virus will develop a more severe form of the disease.
    • Recovery from severe illness might take several weeks or months.
    • It usually turns fatal in persons with co-morbidities and immuno-compromised persons (such as transplant patients).

     

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  • Monkeypox Virus: Origins and Outbreaks

    With cases being reported from across the world, monkeypox has caught everyone’s attention.

    What is Monkeypox?

    • Monkeypox is not a new virus.
    • The virus, belonging to the poxvirus family of viruses, was first identified in monkeys way back in 1958, and therefore the name.
    • The first human case was described in 1970 from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
    • Many sporadic outbreaks of animal to human as well as human to human transmission has occurred in Central and West Africa in the past with significant mortality.
    • After the elimination of smallpox, monkeypox has become one of the dominant poxviruses in humans, with cases increasing over years along with a consequent reduction in the age-group affected.

    How is it transmitted?

    • Since the transmission occurs only with close contact, the outbreaks have been in many cases self-limiting.
    • Since in the majority of affected people, the incubation period ranges from five to 21 days and is often mild or self-limiting, asymptomatic cases could transmit the disease unknowingly.
    • The outbreaks in Central Africa are thought to have been contributed by close contact with animals in regions adjoining forests.
    • While monkeys are possibly only incidental hosts, the reservoir is not known.
    • It is believed that rodents and non-human primates could be potential reservoirs.

    Does the virus mutate?

    • Monkeypox virus is a DNA virus with a quite large genome of around 2,00,000 nucleotide bases.
    • While being a DNA virus, the rate of mutations in the monkeypox virus is significantly lower (~1-2 mutations per year) compared to RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2.
    • The low rate of mutation therefore limits the wide application of genomic surveillance in providing detailed clues to the networks of transmission for monkeypox.
    • A number of genome sequences in recent years from Africa and across the world suggest that there are two distinct clades of the virus — the Congo Basin/Central African clade and the West African clade.
    • Each of the clades further have many lineages.

    What do the genomes say?

    • With over a dozen genome sequences of monkeypox, it is reassuring that the sequences are quite identical to each other suggesting that only a few introductions resulted in the present spread of cases.
    • Additionally, almost all genomes have come from the West African clade, which has much lesser fatality compared to the Central African one.
    • This also roughly corroborates with the epidemiological understanding that major congregations in the recent past contributed to the widespread transmission across different countries.

    Does it have an effective vaccine?

    • It is reassuring that we know quite a lot more about the virus and its transmission patterns.
    • We also have effective ways of preventing the spread, including a vaccine.
    • Smallpox/vaccinia vaccine provides protection.
    • While the vaccine has been discontinued in 1980 following the eradication of smallpox, emergency stockpiles of the vaccines are maintained by many countries.
    • Younger individuals are unlikely to have received the vaccine and are therefore potentially susceptible to monkeypox which could partly explain its emergence in younger individuals.

     

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  • Norms eased for GM Crop Research

    The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has issued guidelines easing norms for research into genetically modified (GM) crops and circumventing challenges of using foreign genes to change crops profile.

    Guidelines for Safety Assessment of Genome Edited Plants, 2022: Key Highlights

    • It exempt researchers who use gene-editing technology to modify the genome of the plant from seeking approvals from the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC).
    • The environment ministry in March 2022 exempted SDN 1 and SDN 2 genomes from Rules 7-11 of the Environment Protection Act.
    • Conventional breeding technique takes 8- 10 years for development of new crop varieties; genome-editing can do this faster.
    • The Environment Ministry too has sanctioned this exemption.

    What are the SDNs?

    The genome edited plants derived from the use of genome editing techniques employing site- directed nucleases (SDNs) such ZFNs, TALENs, CRISPR and other nucleases with similar functions are generally classified under three categories as

    1. Site-Directed Nuclease (SDN)-1, a site-directed mutagenesis without using a DNA sequence template;
    2. SDN-2, a site-directed mutagenesis using a DNA sequence template; and
    3. SDN-3, site-directed insertion of gene/large DNA sequence using a DNA sequence template.

    What are GM crops?

    • The GM plants involve transgenic technology or introducing a gene from a different species into a plant, for instance BT-cotton, where a gene from soil bacterium is used to protect a plant from pest attack.
    • The worry around this method is that these genes may spread to neighboring plants, where such effects are not intended and so their applications have been controversial.
    • Genome editing involves the use of technologies that allow genetic material to be added, removed, or altered at particular locations in the genome. Several approaches to genome editing have been developed.
    • A well-known one is called CRISPR-Cas9, which is short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and CRISPR-associated protein 9.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q.The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee is constituted under the:

    (a) Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006

    (b) Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999

    (c) Environment (Protection) Act, 1986

    (d) Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972

     

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    About Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC)

    • The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) is a statutory body conotified under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
    • It was formed as the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee and was renamed to its current name in 2010.
    • It functions under the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change.
    • The body regulates the use, manufacture, storage, import and export of hazardous microorganisms or genetically-engineered organisms and cells in India.

     

     

  • What are Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chips?

    Market leader Nvidia recently announced its H100 GPU (graphics processing unit), which is said to be one of the world’s largest and most powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) accelerators, packed with 80 billion transistors.

    What are AI chips?

    • AI chips are built with specific architecture and have integrated AI acceleration to support deep learning-based applications.
    • These chips, with their hardware architectures and complementary packaging, memory, storage and interconnect technologies, make it possible to infuse AI into a broad spectrum of applications.
    • There are different types of AI chips such as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), central processing units (CPUs) and GPUs, designed for diverse AI applications.

    What is Deep Learning?

    • Deep learning, more commonly known as active neural network (ANN) or deep neural network (DNN), is a subset of machine learning and comes under the broader umbrella of AI.
    • It combines a series of computer commands or algorithms that stimulate activity and brain structure.
    • DNNs go through a training phase, learning new capabilities from existing data.
    • DNNs can then inference, by applying these capabilities learned during deep learning training to make predictions against previously unseen data.
    • Deep learning can make the process of collecting, analysing, and interpreting enormous amounts of data faster and easier.

    Utility of AI chips

    • The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chips has risen, with chipmakers designing different types of these chips to power AI applications such as:
    1. Natural language processing (NLP)
    2. Computer vision
    3. Robotics, and
    4. Network security across a wide variety of sectors, including automotive, IT, healthcare, and retail

    Are they different from traditional chips?

    • When traditional chips, containing processor cores and memory, perform computational tasks, they continuously move commands and data between the two hardware components.
    • These chips, however, are not ideal for AI applications as they would not be able to handle higher computational necessities of AI workloads which have huge volumes of data.
    • Although, some of the higher-end traditional chips may be able to process certain AI applications.
    • In comparison, AI chips generally contain processor cores as well as several AI-optimised cores that are designed to work in harmony when performing computational tasks.
    • The AI cores are optimised for the demands of heterogeneous enterprise-class AI workloads with low-latency inferencing, due to close integration with the other processor cores.

    What are their applications?

    • Use of AI chips for NLP applications has increased due to the rise in demand for chatbots and online channels such as Messenger, Slack, and others
    • They use NLP to analyse user messages and conversational logic.
    • Then there are chipmakers who have built AI processors designed to help customers achieve business insights at scale across banking, finance, trading, insurance applications and customer interactions.

    What firms are making these chips?

    • Nvidia Corporation, Intel Corporation, IBM Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Apple Inc. are some of the key players in the AI chip market.

    Major breakthroughs

    • Nvidia, which dominates the market, offers a wide portfolio of AI chips including Grace CPU, H100 and its predecessor A100 GPUs.
    • It is capable of handling some of the largest AI models with billions of parameters.
    • The company claims that twenty H100 GPUs can sustain the equivalent of the entire world’s internet traffic.
    • IBM’s new AI chip, announced last year, can support financial services workloads like fraud detection, loan processing, clearing and settlement of trades, anti-money laundering and risk analysis.

    Scale of global market

    • The Worldwide AI chip industry accounted for $8.02 billion in 2020.
    • It is expected to reach $194.9 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.4% from 2021 to 2030.

    What can be expected in the future?

    • AI company Cerebras Systems set a new standard with its brain-scale AI solution, paving the way for more advanced solutions in the future.
    • Its CS-2, powered by the Wafer Scale Engine (WSE-2) is a single wafer-scale chip with 2.6 trillion transistors and 8,50,000 AI optimised cores.
    • The human brain contains on the order of 100 trillion synapses, the firm said, adding that a single CS-2 accelerator can support models of over 120 trillion parameters (synapse equivalents) in size.
    • Another AI chip design approach, neuromorphic computing, utilises an engineering method based on the activity of the biological brain.
    • An increase in the adoption of neuromorphic chips in the automotive industry is expected in the next few years.

     

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  • What is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)?

    A team of scientists from Australia have found that babies at risk of the mysterious Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, generally have low levels of an enzyme called butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) in their blood.

    What is SIDS?

    • Sudden Infant Death Syndrome refers to the sudden and unexpected death of an otherwise healthy infant under the age of one, generally while they are sleeping.
    • Most SIDS-related deaths occur in infants between the age of 1-4 months.
    • According to the NHS website, parents can reduce the risk of SIDS by not smoking while pregnant or after the baby is born and ensuring that the baby is placed on their back when they sleep.
    • Some health experts have said that it is associated with issues in the part of an infant’s brain that controls breathing and waking up.

    Prevalence of SIDS

    • SIDS, also known as ‘cot death’, has claimed the lives of thousands of children across the West.
    • US estimates that about 3,400 babies die suddenly and unexpectedly every year.
    • Meanwhile, the United Kingdom reports about 200 such deaths annually.

    What does the new study say?

    • The study assessed whether there was something inherently different in babies that succumbed to SIDS.
    • The researchers compared dried blood samples from 655 healthy babies, 26 babies who died due to SIDS and 41 babies who died of other causes.
    • The team found that around nine of ten babies who died from SIDS had lower levels of BChE enzymes than the babies in the other two groups.

    What is the BChE (Butyrylcholinesterase) enzyme responsible for?

    • These enzymes are responsible for sending out signals that make a baby wake up, turn her head, or gasp for breath.
    • It is part of the autonomic system, and controls function like blood pressure and breathing.

     

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  • RNA granules to treat neurodegenerative disorders

    Researchers at IISc Bangalore have identified a protein in yeast cells that dissolves RNA-protein complexes, also known as RNA granules.

    What is mRNA?

    • Messenger RNA (mRNA) is a single-stranded RNA (Ribo Nucleic Acid) molecule that is complementary to one of the DNA strands of a gene.
    • The mRNA is an RNA version of the gene that leaves the cell nucleus and moves to the cytoplasm where proteins are made.
    • During protein synthesis, an organelle called a ribosome moves along the mRNA, reads its base sequence, and uses the genetic code to translate each three-base triplet, or codon, into its corresponding amino acid.

    What are RNA granules?

    • Inside the cytoplasm of any cell there are structures made of messenger RNA (mRNA) and proteins known as RNA granules.
    • Unlike other structures in the cell (such as mitochondria), the RNA granules are not covered and confined by a membrane.
    • This makes them highly dynamic in nature, thereby allowing them to constantly exchange components with the surrounding.
    • RNA granules are present in the cytoplasm at low numbers under normal conditions but increase in number and size under stressful conditions including diseases.

    Why are they unique?

    • A defining feature which does not change from one organism to another (conserved) of the RNA granule protein components is the presence of stretches containing repeats of certain amino acids.
    • Such stretches are referred to as low complexity regions.
    • Repeats of arginine (R), glycine (G) and glycine (G) — known as RGG — are an example of low complexity sequence.

    Functions of RNA granules

    • Messenger RNAs are converted to proteins (building blocks of the cell) by the process of translation.
    • RNA granules determine messenger RNA (mRNA) fate by deciding when and how much protein would be produced from mRNA.
    • Protein synthesis is a multi-step and energy-expensive process.
    • Therefore, a common strategy used by cells when it encounters unfavorable conditions is to shut down protein production and conserve energy to deal with a stressful situation.
    • RNA granules help in the process of shutting down protein production.
    • Some RNA granule types (such as Processing bodies or P-bodies) not only regulate protein production but also accomplish degradation and elimination of the mRNAs, which in turn helps in reducing protein production.

    What is the recent study?

    • Researchers concluded that low complexity sequences which normally promote granule formation, in this case promote the disintegration of RNA granules in yeast cells.
    • They observed that the identified protein Sbp1 is specific for dissolving P-bodies and not stress granules which are related RNA granule type also present in the cytoplasm.

    Significance of the study

    • This study has highlighted the potential of amino acid repeats (RGG) as a therapeutic intervention.
    • The study may help analyze the effect of repeat sequences in genetically engineered mice that accumulate insoluble pathological aggregates in brain cells.
    • This could possibly help in treating neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

     

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  • What is INSACOG?

    The PM has announced that the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) would be extended to India’s neighbouring countries.

    What is INSACOG?

    • INSACOG was established in December 2020 as a joint initiative of the Union Health Ministry of Health and Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
    • It aims to expand the whole-genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease, across India with the aim of understanding how the virus spreads and evolves.
    • It functions under the Ministry of Science and Technology with the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

    Composition of INSACOG

    • INSACOG started out with the participation of 10 national research laboratories of the central government, and gradually expanded to a network of 38 labs.
    • It now includes private labs operating on a hub-and-spoke model.
    • These works to monitor genomic variations in SARS-CoV-2 by a sentinel sequencing effort which is facilitated by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
    • It now involves the Central Surveillance Unit (CSU) under the central government’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP).

    Working of the INSACOG

    • The data from the genome sequencing laboratories is analysed as per the field data trends to study the linkages, if any, between the genomic variants and epidemiological trends.
    • INSACOG helps to understand super spreader events and outbreaks, and strengthen public health interventions across the country to help break chains of transmission.
    • Linking this data with IDSP data and the patient’s symptoms helps to better understand viral infection dynamics, and trends of morbidity and mortality.
    • The data can be linked with host genomics, immunology, clinical outcomes, and risk factors for a more comprehensive outlook.
    • Sequencing assumes added significance as the incidence of reinfections and vaccine breakthroughs increases.

     

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  • Sagittarius A*: Black Hole at the Centre of our Galaxy imaged

    Scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) facility revealed the first image of the black hole at the centre of our galaxy i.e. the Milky Way.

    The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy that contains at least 100 billion stars. Viewed from above or below it resembles a spinning pinwheel, with our sun situated on one of the spiral arms and Sagittarius A* located at the centre.

    What is Sagittarius A*?

     

    • Pronounced Sagittarius ‘A’ star, it refers to the believed location of the supermassive black hole in the centre of our galaxy.
    • About 50 years ago, astronomers identified an area within the constellation of Sagittarius that was the strongest region of radio emission – thus making it the likely centre of the Milky Way.
    • It possesses 4 million times the mass of our sun and is located about 26,000 light-years—the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km)—from Earth.

    What is an event horizon?

    • Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape, making viewing them extremely challenging.
    • A black hole’s event horizon is the point of no return beyond which anything—stars, planets, gas, dust and all forms of electromagnetic radiation—gets dragged into oblivion.
    • The closer someone came to a black hole, the greater the speed they would need to escape that massive gravity.
    • The event horizon is the threshold around the black hole where the escape velocity surpasses the speed of light.

    What are the recent observations?

    • The image of Sagittarius A* (SgrA*) gave support to the idea that the compact object at the centre of our galaxy is indeed a black hole, strengthening Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
    • The image was obtained using the EHT’s global network of observatories working collectively to observe radio sources associated with black holes.
    • It showed a ring of light —super-heated disrupted matter and radiation circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon—around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole.
    • This is called the black hole’s shadow or silhouette.

    How did Einstein’s theory found its proof here?

    • According to Einstein’s theory, nothing can travel faster through space than the speed of light.
    • This means a black hole’s event horizon is essentially the point from which nothing can return.
    • The name refers to the impossibility of witnessing any event taking place inside that border, the horizon beyond which one cannot see.

    About EHT Facility

    • EHT project is a large telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes.
    • It combines data from several very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) stations around Earth, which form a combined array.
    • It provides an angular resolution sufficient to observe objects the size of a supermassive black hole’s event horizon.
    • In 2019, the eHT facility made history by releasing the first-ever image of a black hole, M87* — the black hole at the centre of a galaxy Messier 87, which is a supergiant elliptic galaxy.

     

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  • What are W Bosons?

    Researchers from Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) Collaboration, in the US, announced that they have made a precise measurement of the mass of the so-called W boson.

    Do you know?

    There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. They work over different ranges and have different strengths. Gravity is the weakest but it has an infinite range.

    What is W Boson?

    • Discovered in 1983, the W boson is a fundamental particle.
    • Together with the Z boson, it is responsible for the weak force, one of four fundamental forces that govern the behaviour of matter in our universe.
    • Particles of matter interact by exchanging these bosons, but only over short distances.
    • The W boson, which is electrically charged, changes the very make up of particles.
    • It switches protons into neutrons, and vice versa, through the weak force, triggering nuclear fusion and letting stars burn.
    • This burning also creates heavier elements and, when a star dies, those elements are tossed into space as the building blocks for planets and even people.

    Debate over W Boson’s mass

    • The weak force was combined with the electromagnetic force in theories of a unified electroweak force in the 1960s, in an effort to make the basic physics mathematically consistent.
    • But the theory called for the force-carrying particles to be massless, even though scientists knew the theoretical W boson had to be heavy to account for its short range.
    • Theorists accounted for the mass of the W by introducing another unseen mechanism. This became known as the Higgs mechanism, which calls for the existence of a Higgs boson.

    What is the news?

    • CDF researchers stated that this precisely determined value did not match with what was expected from estimates using the standard model of particle physics.
    • This result is highly significant because this implies the incompleteness of the standard model description.
    • This is a major claim, since the standard model has been extraordinarily successful in the past decades.
    • Hence, physicists are looking for corroboration from other, independent, future experiments.

    What is the standard model of elementary particle physics?

    • The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions while omitting gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles.
    • It is a theoretical construct in physics that describes particles of matter and their interaction. Ex. Proton, Neutron, Electron etc.
    • It is a description that views the elementary particles of the world as being connected by mathematical symmetries, just as an object and its mirror image are connected by a bilateral (left–right) symmetry.
    • These are mathematical groups generated by continuous transformations from, say, one particle to another.
    • According to this model there are a finite number of fundamental particles which are represented by the characteristic “eigen” states of these groups.
    • The particles predicted by the model, such as the Z boson, have been seen in experiments and the last to be discovered, in 2012, was the Higgs boson which gives mass to the heavy particles.

    Why is the standard model believed to be incomplete?

    • The standard model is thought to be incomplete because it gives a unified picture of only three of the four fundamental forces of nature and it totally omits gravity.
    • So, in the grand plan of unifying all forces so that a single equation would describe all the interactions of matter, the standard model was found to be lacking.
    • The other gap in the standard model is that it does not include a description of dark matter particles.

    How are the symmetries related to particles?

    • The symmetries of the standard model are known as gauge symmetries, as they are generated by “gauge transformations” which are a set of continuous transformations (like rotation is a continuous transformation).
    • Each symmetry is associated with a gauge boson.
    • For example, the gauge boson associated with electromagnetic interactions is the photon.
    • The gauge bosons associated with weak interactions are the W and Z bosons. There are two W bosons — W+ and W-.

    What is the main result of the recent experiment?

    • The recent experiment at CDF, which measured the mass of the W boson as 80,433.5 +/- 9.4 Mev/c2, which is approximately 80 times the mass of a hydrogen nucleus.
    • This came out to be more than what is expected from the standard model.
    • The expected value using the standard model is 80,357 +/- 8 MeV/c2 .
    • Thus, the W boson mass itself is a prediction of the standard model.
    • Therefore, any discrepancy in its mass means a lack of self-consistency in the standard model.

    What is the discrepancy they obtained?

    • The mass discrepancy of the W boson needs to be checked and confirmed to the same accuracy by other facilities, for example, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

    Where do we stand now in terms of new physics?

    • New physics is in the air, and experiments have been gearing up for some years now to detect new particles.
    • With its high-precision determination of the W boson mass, the CDF has struck at the heart of the standard model.
    • So it is a significant finding and if this is confirmed by the LHC and other experiments, it will throw open the field for ideas and experiment.

     

     

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  • What is Monkeypox?

    The UK health authorities have confirmed a case of Monkeypox, which is a virus passed from infected animals such as rodents to humans, in someone with a recent travel history to Nigeria where they are believed to have caught it.

    What is Monkeypox?

    • The monkeypox virus is an orthopoxvirus, which is a genus of viruses that also includes the variola virus, which causes smallpox, and vaccinia virus, which was used in the smallpox vaccine.
    • It causes symptoms similar to smallpox, although they are less severe.
    • While vaccination eradicated smallpox worldwide in 1980, monkeypox continues to occur in a swathe of countries in Central and West Africa, and has on occasion showed up elsewhere.
    • According to the WHO, two distinct clade are identified: the West African clade and the Congo Basin clade, also known as the Central African clade.

    Its origin

    • Monkeypox is a zoonosis, that is, a disease that is transmitted from infected animals to humans.
    • Monkeypox virus infection has been detected in squirrels, Gambian poached rats, dormice, and some species of monkeys.
    • According to the WHO, cases occur close to tropical rainforests inhabited by animals that carry the virus.

    Symptoms and treatment

    • Monkeypox begins with a fever, headache, muscle aches, back ache, and exhaustion.
    • It also causes the lymph nodes to swell (lymphadenopathy), which smallpox does not.
    • The WHO underlines that it is important to not confuse monkeypox with chickenpox, measles, bacterial skin infections, scabies, syphilis and medication-associated allergies.
    • The incubation period (time from infection to symptoms) for monkeypox is usually 7-14 days but can range from 5-21 days.
    • There is no safe, proven treatment for monkeypox yet.

     

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