Transcription:

Melanie Cole: Welcome to Expert Insights with the Carle Foundation Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole. We're talking about monkeypox today with Dr. Robert Healy. He's the chief medical quality officer at the Carl Foundation Hospital. Dr. Healy. It's a pleasure to have you join us. This is. A very interesting topic. People are hearing this word thrown about, they don't know what it is. Kind of like when we heard COVID at the very beginning, but this is not the same. So tell us a little bit about monkeypox. How did it start? What do we know about this?

Dr. Robert Healy: Yeah, great questions. you're right. It's not the same. And, this is another virus, I think over the next number of years and decades, we'll be talking about more and more of this type of virus, which is normally just at a low rate. And it could be kind of living among animals or birds, and with humans encroaching on those areas, we're gonna see more of them crossing over into humans. And we'll probably have more to talk about as time goes on, but monkeypox is different. I think the first thing to know is that it's not as contagious as COVID, which is a great thing to hear.

The second thing is not as deadly as COVID. So it's a serious illness but it's something that we see in our communities and in our offices and not so much in the hospital. That's a big difference between this and COVID.

Melanie Cole: Well, I'm glad you made that distinction for us now. It's got the name pox. So is there any correlation between chicken pot? Smallpox. I mean, what do we know about that?

Dr. Robert Healy: Yeah, it's in the same family. So, pox is just the things you get on your skin traditionally from these kind of viruses. So monkeypox is in the same category. As those other ones that you mentioned a little detail, probably too much, but it's a DNA virus as opposed to an RNA virus like COVID or the coronaviruses, that means is it doesn't change as quickly. So we won't see as many variants with monkeypox as we have with COVID for instance.

Melanie Cole: Okay. So now let's just talk about first prevention because where have we been seeing it? Tell us a little bit about how it's transmitted so that we know if it's something we can prevent, or we're not at risk for.

Dr. Robert Healy: Yeah, great question. I think the first thing is for me to make a couple statements and that is that monkeypox isn't a sexually transmitted illness. Like syphilis or gonorrhea. And then secondly, it's not just a disease that affects homosexual males or males who have sex with males. That's where it's happening right now. That's where it's clustered. But it's important for us all to understand that we could all be at risk for it. So how do you protect yourself? Right now, most people that are coming down with the illness do have a connection, either themselves or a close person with them that is in that category of man who have sex with men.

And it's thought that the virus is in that community. And the close skin to skin contact that can occur is what's transmitting from person to person. So how do you protect yourself against it? There's anywhere from behavior modifications. In other words, talking to your partner, seeing if they have any rash or something, and then avoiding that area of the skin talking to people and see if they've had any high risk exposures themselves and maybe not having as much of an exposure to them. There's also the there's treatment available once you get monkeypox and we can talk about that a little bit later.

There's a vaccine available mostly for people who have had a high exposure to prevent them from also getting disease. I guess mostly it's education. It's being aware of your partner being aware of people you're around and if they have any skin lesions trying to avoid them at all costs.

Melanie Cole: Okay. That was very succinct. But you mentioned vaccines. So let's talk about that because I'm of a certain age where I didn't get the chickenpox vaccine, I got chickenpox. Right. And nowadays kids are getting, which now I got the shingles vaccine, so I don't get that too, because they're all tied in together, but the vaccines that we've gotten, I think I probably got smallpox vaccine as well. Do these things help to prevent it? And you mentioned a vaccine for monkeypox specifically tell us about all of this.

Dr. Robert Healy: So the interesting thing about the vaccines available for monkeypox is they were developed for smallpox. So as we remember in the early part of the century with terror attacks, we really thought that there'd be a bioterrorism incident. And so, a lot of work was done on a vaccine for smallpox cause that's a very deadly disease. Since it's in the same category of close, relative of monkeypox, it's also been effective against monkeypox. So there's one vaccine now that is being used. It's called Geneos that's the brand name rather. And it's available in limited supply, but we're getting more of it available.

And really what it's for is for a couple of different categories of. One is if you're at high risk of getting monkeypox. So if you're in that, the current category of where most of this is occurring, which is in men who have sex with men, then you can call your local county public health department and see if you can get a vaccine to help prevent you from ever getting disease. The other category of people where it's being used is if someone has a high risk exposure. So if your partner were to develop monkeypox or a family member that you were living with, then you can get the vaccine after a high risk exposure.

If you get it within four days, you might prevent yourself from getting monkeypox. And if you get it after that, within a couple of weeks, you could still impact the disease. It won't be as severe. So those are the, places where the vaccine's being used right now. Again, limited right now, but we're getting more of it. There's another vaccine that's available that's more like the what Us of a certain age, have those scars on our arms from getting a smallpox vaccine way back. I think it stopped being given in the United States in 1980.

But when we were kids, we would get a scratch on our arm and the vaccine would be, put on those scratches. it was a, form of vaccinia it's called, which would give you a mild disease. So you would get, ping in that area. So blistering and, you go through a whole cycle of that skin then scarring. So that's why have that scar on our arms. We don't know if people who have had that vaccine in the past are protected now against monkeypox and there's some data that shows there's some protection, but it's really early. And we don't know for sure, probably better than if you didn't get that.

The other vaccine that's available currently is similar to that, which is the, either scratch in your arm and they put drops on it. And it gives you a small infection that's very localized. That's not being used yet, but that is another tool available, if monkey pops were to spread a lot more than it has right now.

Melanie Cole: Wow. A lot of information packed into one informative podcast. I'd like you to wrap it up. Dr. Healy, if you would like, would you please let the listeners know what you would want them to know when people ask you and I'm sure they do all the time about monkeypox prevention, whether masks work really what we should be thinking about? Certainly not panicking, but definitely paying attention.

Dr. Robert Healy: Yeah, good points. I think what we should know is that this is really kind of a bread and butter disease for public health to address. What I mean by that is that there's, tens of thousands of cases. It's not like hundreds of thousands or millions with COVID. So it's more manageable when someone gets the illness or the symptoms, and gets tested and they're positive. Then public health will come in and, talk to that person and find out who their close contacts are and then vaccinate that ring of close contacts. And that's really how we're gonna overcome this current infection raging with monkeypox that we have right now.

And there's some evidence from the UK and from New York city that, that along with other modifications are kind of betting the curve and we're not seeing as many cases. So I think what'll happen is with public health, really being closely in contact with people who have the infection will be able to stop, if they're spreading much further. The thing that I would mention about just our own personal habits or masking, things like that, social distancing, those terms that we're used to in this case for monkeypox, it's really avoiding touching those skin lesions.

So if you have the disease, keeping those lesions covered, really staying home, isolating yourself for a couple of weeks. It could take two to four weeks, unfortunately for the rash to come and go and be gone. But as long as you have that rash, you'll be infective. So you wanna avoid other people. And then yourself just in life being aware of, those that we're in close contact with to make sure they don't have a rash and avoiding that rash, if possible.

Melanie Cole: What great information, Dr. Healy, you're always such a wealth of knowledge. Thank you again for joining us for more information or to get connected with one of our providers, you can visit carle.org or for a listing of Carle providers. And to view Carle sponsored educational activities, please visit our website at carleconnect.com.

That concludes this episode of Expert Insights with the Carle Foundation Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening today.