28 December 2023

Irfaan Maan, former Clinical Research Fellow at CNWL’s Mortimer Market Centre has co-authored a research article for the online journal Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases, alongside Richard Gilson, Professor of Sexual Health and HIV Medicine and Dr Manik Kohli, Clinical Research Fellow from the UCL Institute for Global Health.

The 2022 outbreak saw a rapid rise and then decline in mpox cases, predominately among gay, bisexual and men who have sex with men.

Unique to this outbreak was the high prevalence of HIV (between 27 per cent and 60 per cent), highlighting the need to better understand mpox in this population.

The research article seeks to review data on the treatment and prevention of mpox in people with HIV.

Read the full article on this website.

The article finds that people with HIV were disproportionately affected during the outbreak, with higher rates of symptoms being reported and those with advanced HIV disease at higher risk of severe disease, hospitalisation and death.

Vaccination has played an important role in protecting people from the mpox virus, and the article concludes:

“HIV and other sexually transmitted infection testing should be offered to all people diagnosed with mpox… greater access to vaccination is important to prevent outbreaks and reduce health inequalities.

“Clinical trials are still needed to establish the efficacy of treatments… people with HIV should be included in both treatment and prevention trials to confirm the safety and efficacy in the population most affected in the recent outbreak.”

CNWL’s Sexual Health Service vaccinates more than 78 thousand people for mpox

CNWL’s Sexual Health team has been supporting the mpox vaccination programme, with staff administering the vaccine from our clinic at Mortimer Market Centre.

Members of the local community who were most in need of the vaccine were invited to come forward, with the team vaccinating more than 78 thousand people to date - the most from any sexual health service in the UK.

At the height of the outbreak, they were also the first to introduce intradermal injection which meant they were able to continue vaccinating at scale.

We offer free and confidential sexual health services in London and Surrey. 

Visit our sexual health services website here.