US officials are considering broadening recom𝔍mendations for who gets vaccinated against monkeypox, possibly to include many men with HIV or those recently diagnosed with other sex🐻ually transmitted diseases.
US officials are considering broadening recommendations for who gets vaccinated against monkeypox, possibly to include many men with HIV♕ or those recently diagnosed with other sexually transmitted diseases.
US officials are considering broadening recom𝔍mendations for who gets vaccinated against monkeypox, possibly to include many men with HIV or those recently diagnosed with other sex🐻ually transmitted diseases.
Driving the discussiꦯon is a study released Thursday showing that a higher-than-expected share of monkeypox infections are in peop🌳le with other sexually transmitted infections.
John T Brooks, chief medical officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's monkeypox outbreak response, said the report represents a “call to action.🦹”
Brooks told The Associated Press on Thursday that he expecte꧒d vaccine recommendations to expand and th🌼at "the White House, together with CDC, is working on a plan for what that will look like.”
Currently, the CDC recommends the vaccine to people who are close contact with someone who has monkeypox; people who know a sexual partner was diagnosed in the past two weeks; and gay or bis🐻exual men who had multiple sexual partners in the last two weeks in an area with known virus spread.
Sℱhots are 💧also recommended for health care workers at high risk of exposure.
The vast majority of monkeypox cases are in men who have sex with men who reporte꧒d close contact with an infected person during sex. But the new CDC report suggested infections in people with HIV and other STDs may be a bigger issue than previously realized.
♌The report looked at about 2,000 monkeypox cases from four state♒s and four cities from mid-May to late July.
It found that 38 percent of those with monkeypox infections had been diag🤪nosed with HIV, far higher than their share of the population among men who have sex with men.
The study also found that 41 percent of monkeypox patients had been diagnosed with an STD in the preceding year. And about 10 🤡percent of those patients had been diagnosed with three or more different STDs in the prior year.
There were racial differences. More than 60 percent of Black Americans with monkeypox had HIV, c♎ompared with 41 percent of Hispanic people, 28 percent of whites, and 22 percent of Asians.
Jason Farley, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, said men of color who have sex with men should be at the front of the line for monkeypox vaccine doses. Within those🌼 racial and ethnic groups, the next priority should be anyone living with HIV or was recently diagnosed with an STD, he said.
The study has several limitations, including that the data may not be nationally🐎 representative, the authors said.
Brooks said the fi﷽ndings could lead to vaccines being recommended for people with recꦫent STD infections, people with HIV, people taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications to prevent HIV infection, and, possibly, prostitutes.
Discu♏ssions of expanding eligibility will have to take into account the supply of the two-dose vaccine. And any substantial expansion of monkeypox vaccination recommendations may also be subject to review by CDC's outside vaccine advisers, health officials say.
Also on Thursday, the CDC sent a letter to state and local health 🌄departments that said federal funds for HIV♑ and STD prevention can also now be used against monkeypox. Cases in the US seem to be declining, officials say.
(Inputs from PTI)