Overlooked monkeypox cases among men having sex with men during the 2022 outbreak-a retrospective study

Objectives: The aim of this study was to characterize overlooked cases of patients with monkeypox in-fection in the 2022 outbreak. Methods: Clinical characteristics of 26 patients who were misdiagnosed with other diseases were de-scribed.Results: Of the 26 patients who were misdiagnosed, six (23%) were given a diagnosis of bacterial ton-sillitis, six (23%) were diagnosed with primary syphilis, five (19.2%) with oral or genital herpes, and four (15.3%) with bacterial proctitis or anal abscess. The average time interval between missed and right diag-nosis was 4.4 days. There was no difference in the missed cases between the early and the later month of the outbreak.Conclusion: Monkeypox might still be commonly overlooked, especially in patients presenting with fever and sore throat or solitary ulcer as sole manifestations.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )

Automated summary

This study aimed to describe the characteristics of overlooked cases of monkeypox infection in the 2022 outbreak. The clinical characteristics of 26 patients who were misdiagnosed with other diseases were described. The study found that monkeypox might still be commonly overlooked, especially in patients presenting with fever and sore throat or solitary ulcer as sole manifestations.