全球累计确诊病例约3500例，研究称猴痘病毒变异速度超出预期 Monkeypox is mutating at 12 times the expected rate

据世界卫生组织官网消息，截至6月22日，全球已有50个国家和地区报告了约3500例猴痘确诊病例，其中大多数来自欧洲。猴痘异常传播原因成谜，现在科学家发现，最新的猴痘病毒变异速度是预期的6到12倍，可能是其更具传染性的关键。

The monkeypox virus strain that has emerged across the world in recent weeks may be evolving at an abnormally fast rate - making it more infectious than previous versions of the virus.

最近几周在世界各地出现的猴痘病毒毒株可能以异常速度快速进化，使其比以前的病毒更具传染性。

This means that the virus, which is generally believed to spread by physical touch, contaminated surfaces or very close bodily contact could be able to spread in ways atypical to the tropical viruses normal patterns.

这意味着通常认为通过身体接触、受污染的表面或非常密切的身体接触传播的猴痘病毒或能够以与热带病毒正常模式不同的方式传播。

It would explain the recent global monkeypox update, where 201 cases have been detected across 25 U.S. states and Washington D.C., with over 3,500 cases detected worldwide in countries where the virus is not endemic.

这将解释为什么最近猴痘在全球传播，在美国25个州和华盛顿特区检测到201例病例，在全球范围内非猴痘病毒流行地区检测到3500多例病例。

Researchers, whose findings are pending official publishing in Nature Medicine, collected and studied 15 samples of the monkeypox virus for the study.

研究人员收集并研究了15份猴痘病毒样本，研究结果发表在《自然医学》杂志上。

The research team restructured the viruses genetic information to find the number of changes the virus had undergone since this strain began its circulation.

研究小组重组了病毒的遗传信息，试图发现该病毒自开始传播以来所经历的变异次数。

While the virus was detected recently in human populations, experts believe this strain of West African monkeypox first began its movement through the world in 2018.

虽然最近在人群中发现了这种病毒，但专家认为，这种西非猴痘病毒毒株于2018 年首次开始在全球传播。

DNA viruses like monkeypox generally do not rapidly mutate like COVID-19 does.

像猴痘病毒这样的DNA病毒通常不会像新冠病毒那样快速变异。

The nature of the virus allows it to fix errors that emerge when it replicates, leaving much lower room for mutations to form - and in effect limiting the number of variants.

这种病毒的性质使其能够修复复制时出现的错误，因此出现突变的可能性很低，这限制了病毒变异的次数。

When researchers did investigate this strain of the virus, they found that it had mutated between six to 12 times the generally believed rate for the virus.

研究人员在研究中发现，这种猴痘病毒毒株的变异率是人们普遍认为的病毒变异率的6到12倍。

Why exactly this is cannot be determined, though the experts believe that this could be playing a role in how the virus has managed to storm the world this year.

尽管专家们认为这可能在今年猴痘病毒席卷全球的过程中起到一定作用，但具体原因尚不清楚。

来源：每日邮报
编辑：董静