During the monkeypox epidemic, or mpox, which spread like wildfire in 2022 in around 100 countries, 38 to 50% of people infected with the virus and carrying HIV developed a form severe necrotizing mpox. With higher mortality in these patients, this finding warranted further study of the interaction of advanced HIV and mpox.
A particularly serious form of monkeypox, also called “mpox”, has been identified in patients infected with HIV, to the point of being often fatal in those who are at the AIDS stage, according to a study published Tuesday. ” A severe and necrotizing form of mpox (could) resemble a disease characteristic of AIDS sum up the authors of this study published in The Lancet.
The monkeypox epidemic, which spread around the world in 2022 before largely subsiding, mainly affected men in homosexual relationships. However, it is a population where there is a greater proportion of people infected with HIV, the virus which, at the most advanced stage, triggers and AIDS by affecting the patient’s immunity and making him vulnerable to a series of diseases.
A characteristic mpox of AIDS
In this context, researchers have been interested in the particular risks posed by monkeypox in patients already infected with HIV. The authors of the study have thus studied the case of nearly 400 patients infected with both HIV and mpox. In their case, they identified a very serious form of the disease, which they described as “fulminant mpox”.
This form, which focuses on patients where the HIV infection is at an advanced stage, results in massive necrosis of the skin, genitals, and even the lungs. It caused the death of 27 patients. All had exceeded the threshold generally used to speak of AIDS: less than 200 CD4 T lymphocytes per mm3 of blood. These deaths alone represent a high proportion of the hundred deaths recorded in the context of the epidemic, out of several tens of thousands of cases. For the researchers, these conclusions should encourage health authorities to give priority to vaccinating people with HIV against mpox.
They also call for this serious form of mpox to be added to the list of diseases characteristic of AIDS. This includes around fifteen pathologies which are deemed to be specifically dangerous in the event of advanced HIV infection.
