'No evidence' anti-malaria drug artemisinin prevents or treats mpox: scientists

"Artemisinin is the most fundamental way to prevent and resolve monkeypox," read part of a post written in traditional Chinese that was shared on social media site X on August 16, 2024.

It blamed mpox, formerly called monkeypox, on "vaccine disaster" which is a term often used in Chinese social media to spread disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.

Quoting exiled Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui -- a cult-like figure convicted in the United States over a billion-dollar scam -- the post alleged Covid-19 vaccines have "taken away people's immunity" rendering them vulnerable to mpox and AIDS (archived links here and here).

In 2022, Guo labelled mpox a "complication of the vaccine", a claim rejected by scientists.

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Screenshot of the false X post, captured on August 30, 2024

Mpox is transmitted to humans by infected animals that can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact. It can cause fever, muscle pains, skin lesions and in the most severe cases death (archived link).

Its resurgence and the detection in Central Africa of the new Clade 1b strain prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare its highest international alert level on August 14.

The spike in cases sparked a wave of misinformation about the disease.

Posts touting artemisinin for use against mpox also spread elsewhere on X and on Facebook and Gettr.

Mpox vaccine

"Vaccination remains the best strategy to prevent mpox," Jonas Albarnaz, who specialises in pox viruses at the Pirbright Institute in Britain, told AFP on August 27 (archived link).

He said vaccines approved for mpox were developed for use against smallpox, a deadlier disease caused by a related virus that has now been eradicated.

"However, availability of these vaccines is very limited, representing a major bottleneck for the control strategies," Albarnaz added.

The WHO has called for a major increase in mpox vaccine production and said that a vaccination campaign must be a key priority for affected countries (archived link).

"To date, there is no proven effective antiviral treatment for mpox," the global health agency said in its information sheet on the disease updated on August 26 (archived link).

Some antivirals have received emergency use authorisation in some countries but treatment is focused on taking care of the rash, managing pain and preventing complications, it added.

"There is no scientific evidence showing that artemisinin has preventive or curative effects on mpox," Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, told AFP on August 28 (archived link).

Artemisinin -- the core compound in the artemisinin-based combination therapy drug -- is widely used to treat malaria which is caused by a parasite (archived link).

Covid misinformation

AFP has previously debunked posts that have falsely linked mpox to Covid-19 vaccines.

The mpox virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark in monkeys kept for research, more than half a century before the coronavirus pandemic.

It was first detected in humans in 1970 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"There is no evidence that the Covid vaccine predisposes the recipient to mpox infection. Mpox is acquired by intimate contact with a mpox patient," Yuen Kwok-yung, a microbiologist and infectious diseases specialist at the University of Hong Kong told AFP on August 27.

Covid-19 vaccines "do not compromise a recipient's immunity and do not make people more susceptible to mpox", virologist Jin separately said.

The claim that Covid-19 vaccines cause AIDS have also been repeatedly rejected by scientists.

AIDS is caused by the HIV virus which transmits through blood, semen, pre-seminal fluid, rectal or vaginal fluids and breast milk (archived link).

Most people get HIV from anal or vaginal sex, or through sharing drug injection equipment such as needles or syringes, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Addressing the claim that Covid-19 vaccines cause AIDS, Tufts University School of Medicine virologist John Coffin earlier told AFP: "To be blunt, this is fear mongering based in garbage science at its most heinous."