Smallpox, a disease that killed an estimated 500 million people in the 20th century alone, is the only human disease to be eradicated. However, a new report, "Future State of Smallpox Medical Countermeasures," from the National ...
Apr 13, 2024
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New research to be presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2024) in Barcelona, Spain (27–30 April) shows that even in men who receive two doses of mpox vaccine ...
Mar 30, 2024
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In findings that are nothing short of surprising, scientists have demonstrated that the liver is the site where the immune system unleashes its assault on pneumococcal bacteria following vaccination against the potentially ...
Researchers from the Infection Biology Lab at the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) at Pompeu Fabra University and the HIV Unit at Hospital del Mar Research Institute have shown that intradermal vaccination ...
Jan 12, 2024
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Northwestern Medicine investigators led by Derek Walsh, Ph.D., professor of Microbiology-Immunology, have discovered how poxviruses disarm and evade mitochondrial-driven antiviral responses for their replication in host cells, ...
Dec 19, 2023
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In Indian Country, it is an accepted fact that white settlers distributed items, such as blankets contaminated with smallpox and other infectious diseases, aiming to reduce the population of Native people resisting their ...
Nov 15, 2023
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Mpox, formerly known as "monkeypox," is a disease resulting from a viral infection. Notably, numerous cases of mpox have been reported among men having sexual intercourse with other men. Since 2022, the disease has primarily ...
Jul 27, 2023
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Vaccines against smallpox given until the mid-1970s offer continuing cross-reactive immunity to mpox, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report in a study published in Cell Host & Microbe.
May 23, 2023
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Smallpox, a severe infectious disease caused by the smallpox virus, causes a death rate as high as 30% within 15–20 days after infection. Therefore, development of an anti-smallpox product as a strategic reserve is urgently ...
Feb 13, 2023
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Monkeypox is a zoonotic disease caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV), which is a potential biological warfare agent of bioterrorism and poses the greatest threat to the world's public biosafety and health after variola virus ...
Jan 9, 2023
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Smallpox is an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning spotted, or varus, meaning "pimple". The term "smallpox" was first used in Europe in the 15th century to distinguish variola from the "great pox" (syphilis).
Smallpox localizes in small blood vessels of the skin and in the mouth and throat. In the skin, this results in a characteristic maculopapular rash, and later, raised fluid-filled blisters. V. major produces a more serious disease and has an overall mortality rate of 30–35%. V. minor causes a milder form of disease (also known as alastrim, cottonpox, milkpox, whitepox, and Cuban itch) which kills about 1% of its victims. Long-term complications of V. major infection include characteristic scars, commonly on the face, which occur in 65–85% of survivors. Blindness resulting from corneal ulceration and scarring, and limb deformities due to arthritis and osteomyelitis are less common complications, seen in about 2–5% of cases.
Smallpox is believed to have emerged in human populations about 10,000 BC. The disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year during the 18th century (including five monarchs), and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Of all those infected, 20–60%—and over 80% of infected children—died from the disease.
During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths. In the early 1950s an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox occurred in the world each year. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year. After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in December 1979. To this day, smallpox is the only human infectious disease to have been completely eradicated.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
