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An emerging outbreak of monkeypox infection is quickly spreading worldwide, being currently reported in more than 30 countries, with slightly less than 1000 cases. In the present preliminary report, we collected and synthesized early data concerning epidemiological trends and clinical features of the ongoing outbreak and we compared them with those of previous outbreaks. Data were pooled from six clusters in Italy, Australia, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, totaling 124 cases (for 35 of which it was possible to retrieve detailed information). The ongoing epidemic differs from previous outbreaks in terms of age (54.29% of individuals in their thirties), sex/gender (most cases being males), risk factors, and transmission route, with sexual transmission being highly likely. Also, the clinical presentation is atypical and unusual, being characterized by anogenital lesions and rashes that relatively spare the face and extremities. The most prevalent sign/symptom reported was fever (in 54.29% of cases) followed by inguinal lymphadenopathy (45.71%) and exanthema (40.00%). Asthenia, fatigue, and headache were described in 22.86% and 25.71% of the subjects, respectively. Myalgia was present in 17.14% of the cases. Both genital and anal lesions (ulcers and vesicles) were reported in 31.43% of the cases. Finally, cervical lymphadenopathy was described in 11.43% of the sample, while the least commonly reported symptoms were diarrhea and axillary lymphadenopathy (5.71% of the case series for both symptoms). Some preliminary risk factors can be identified (being a young male, having sex with other men, engaging in risky behaviors and activities, including condomless sex, human immunodeficiency virus positivity (54.29% of the sample analyzed), and a story of previous sexually transmitted infections, including syphilis). On the other hand, being fully virally suppressed and undetectable may protect against a more severe infectious course. However, further research in the field is urgently needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isidro et al.[4] carried out a high-throughput shotgun metagenomic analysis, which enabled them to rapidly reconstruct and characterize from a genomic and phylogenomic standpoint the first monkeypox outbreak genome sequences, including a sequence publicly released on May 20, 2022 by Portugal as well as other Portuguese sequences (for a total of 15 sequences). The authors were able to show that the monkeypox virus currently circulating (lineage B.1) belongs to clade 3 (within the formerly designated "West African" clade, which also includes clade 2) and they hypothesized that the outbreak most likely has a single genetic/genomic origin. Clade 3 would have emerged in 2017, comprising the hMPXV-1A clade and the newly classified lineages A.1, A.1.1, A.2, and B.1,[[14]] with B.1 including all monkeypox genomes from the ongoing outbreak. [Extracted from the article]

Biodegradation, the disintegration of organic matter by microorganism, is essential for the cycling of environmental organic matter. Understanding and predicting the dynamics of this biodegradation have increasingly gained attention from the industries and government regulators. Since changes in environmental organic matter are strenuous to measure, mathematical models are essential in understanding and predicting the dynamics of organic matters. Empirical evidence suggests that grazers' preying activity on microorganism helps to facilitate biodegradation. In this paper, we formulate and investigate a stoichiometry-based organic matter decomposition model in a chemostat culture that incorporates the dynamics of grazers. We determine the criteria for the uniform persistence and extinction of the species and chemicals. Our results show that (1) if at the unique internal steady state, the per capita growth rate of bacteria is greater than the sum of the bacteria's death and dilution rates, then the bacteria will persist uniformly; (2) if in addition to this, (a) the grazers' per capita growth rate is greater than the sum of the dilution rate and grazers' death rate, and (b) the death rate of bacteria is less than some threshold, then the grazers will persist uniformly. These conditions can be achieved simultaneously if there are sufficient resources in the feed bottle. As opposed to the microcosm decomposition models' results, in a chemostat culture, chemicals always persist. Besides the transcritical bifurcation observed in microcosm models, our chemostat model exhibits Hopf bifurcation and Rosenzweig's paradox of enrichment phenomenon. Our sensitivity analysis suggests that the most effective way to facilitate degradation is to decrease the dilution rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]