St. Louis hospital treats suspected case of monkeypox

ST. LOUIS -- Blood and tissue samples from an Illinois teenager will undergo government testing to pinpoint whether he has the monkeypox virus as a local hospital suspects, a spokeswoman for Missouri's health department said Wednesday.

"This, of course, is something we haven't seen before," said Dr. Dennis O'Connor, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital, where the boy was treated Tuesday.

"We're very dependent on lab results to give us the final answer," O'Connor said. "At this point, we don't have a good alternative diagnosis."

O'Connor declined to identify by name or hometown the 14-year-old Southern Illinois boy diagnosed as perhaps having the milder relative of smallpox, displayed by the 12-15 spots scattered on his body.

The teenager has been ordered isolated at his home, O'Connor said.

O'Connor said the boy became ill last Friday and developed monkeypox symptoms including a fever, rash and aches, ostensibly after playing with two prairie dogs he and his uncle bought last month in Indiana and brought back to Illinois.

Prairie dogs, once rising stars in the exotic pet industry, have become the top suspects in the Western Hemisphere's first incidence of monkeypox.

The boy handled his uncle's two prairie dogs "virtually every day," becoming ill without apparently being bitten or scratched by the animals, O'Connor said.

One of the prairie dogs died within a week of arriving in Illinois and was discarded; the second one is in the custody of health officials in Illinois, O'Connor said.

By Wednesday, health officials had confirmed nine human cases of the disease in Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois -- and at least 50 possible cases, largely in the upper Midwest.

As of Wednesday, Missouri had no reported or suspected monkeypox cases, said Nanci Gonder, spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Senior Services. The matter involving the Illinois boy would be counted as an Illinois case, she said.

Cardinal Glennon has forwarded to state health officials the Illinois boy's tissue and blood samples, which in turn will be sent to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for conclusive testing, Gonder said.

It was not immediately clear how long that testing might take.

Monkeypox has a mortality rate of 1 percent to 10 percent in Africa. No humans have died in the United States, and U.S. officials believe better nutrition and medical treatment probably will prevent deaths.

On Wednesday, the U.S. government banned the sale of prairie dogs, barred the importation of African rodents and recommended smallpox shots Wednesday for people exposed to monkeypox, the exotic African disease that has spread from pet prairie dogs to humans.

That aggressive response to the disease came the same day that the federal investigation of the monkeypox outbreak was expanded to eight more states, bringing the total to 15. Those states do not include Missouri or Kansas.

Prairie dogs are found throughout the Great Plains. Their numbers have been reduced more than 95 percent as farming and housing has taken over their range, but there are still 200,000 to 300,000 acres of occupied prairie dog towns in Texas, officials said.

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On the Net:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/monkeypox/index.htm