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A spokesperson for the American Red Cross told STAT the organization has no immediate plans for adding molecular screening for monkeypox. Building and validating a similar test for monkeypox would take time. What would be even better would be to move to a molecular screening test, particularly if the virus becomes endemic here.”īlood banks currently screen for known blood-borne pathogens, like hepatitis B and C, West Nile virus, syphilis, and HIV. “So this policy might be raising the red flag where there’s probably low risk, particularly at the end of 21 days.
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“We know that treatments reduce viral load very quickly,” said Chin-Hong. In January, the American Red Cross declared a national blood crisis. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned doctors to be on the lookout for symptoms that don’t match the typical descriptions of the disease, including single lesions, often near the genitals, instead of the full-blown rash, and the absence of fever, headache, and lymph node swelling.Ĭonversely, the policy might keep viable donors away, at a time when the nation’s blood supply is the lowest it’s been in more than a decade. But as the virus has spread outside of West and Central Africa - where it is endemic - the pattern of disease it causes has begun to shift. Historically, monkeypox has caused rashes that erupt around the face and oral cavity before spreading to the extremities, accompanied by a flu-like array of symptoms. But he worries that it could be missing some cases. “We don’t know what detection in blood means for transmissibility.”įor that reason, he sees the new Red Cross policy as a useful, if somewhat crude, first step. “There’s a lot of uncertainty right now about the potential for bodily fluids to cause monkeypox infections,” said Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco. But because it’s only recently that the virus has started spreading between people, researchers don’t yet have a good handle on how long it lasts in the blood, or if it persists at high enough concentrations to transmit to others who come into contact with blood from someone who is infected. And the lesion-causing virus uses it to spread from the site of initial infection to other areas of the skin. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More