據世界衛生組織官網消息，截至6月22日，全球已有50個國家和地區報告了約3500例猴痘確診病例，其中大多數來自歐洲。猴痘異常傳播原因成謎，現在科學家發現，最新的猴痘病毒變異速度是預期的6到12倍，可能是其更具傳染性的關鍵。
[Photo/Agencies]
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.
最近幾周在世界各地出現的猴痘病毒毒株可能以異常速度快速進化，使其比以前的病毒更具傳染性。
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.
這意味著通常認為通過身體接觸、受污染的表面或非常密切的身體接觸傳播的猴痘病毒或能夠以與熱帶病毒正常模式不同的方式傳播。
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.
這將解釋為什麼最近猴痘在全球傳播，在美國25個州和華盛頓特區檢測到201例病例，在全球範圍內非猴痘病毒流行地區檢測到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.
研究人員收集並研究了15份猴痘病毒樣本，研究結果發表在《自然醫學》雜誌上。
The research team restructured the viruses genetic information to find the number of changes the virus had undergone since this strain began its circulation.
研究小組重組了病毒的遺傳信息，試圖發現該病毒自開始傳播以來所經歷的變異次數。
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.
雖然最近在人群中發現了這種病毒，但專家認為，這種西非猴痘病毒毒株於2018 年首次開始在全球傳播。
DNA viruses like monkeypox generally do not rapidly mutate like COVID-19 does.
像猴痘病毒這樣的DNA病毒通常不會像新冠病毒那樣快速變異。
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.
這種病毒的性質使其能夠修複復制時出現的錯誤，因此出現突變的可能性很低，這限制了病毒變異的次數。
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.
研究人員在研究中發現，這種猴痘病毒毒株的變異率是人們普遍認為的病毒變異率的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.
儘管專家們認為這可能在今年猴痘病毒席捲全球的過程中起到一定作用，但具體原因尚不清楚。
來源：每日郵報編輯：董靜
來源：中國日報網
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