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Dec. 8 (UPI) -- The Jynneos smallpox vaccine offers strong protection against mpox infection after one or two doses, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New data released on Thursday found that the incidence of mpox infections among unvaccinated people was nearly 10 times higher than among fully vaccinated individuals, and 7.4 times higher when compared to those who had received only one dose.
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The estimates were based on data on 9,544 reported mpox cases among men aged 18 to 49 who were diagnosed between July 31 and Oct. 1.
The vaccine is made by Bavarain Nordic. It was first designed to protect against smallpox, a related but more dangerous virus that was declared eradicated in 1980, according to STAT News.
Because of similarities in the genetic structures of the two viruses, it was believed Jynneos would also protect against mpox.
"We were delivering monkeypox vaccines back in June and July without really any human data of efficacy. We had immunogenicity data, but very little efficiency data," Anu Hazra, an infectious diseases physician at Chicago's Howard Brown Health and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, told STAT.
The CDC said that while more data was needed to get a full picture, this study demonstrates the drug's efficacy.
Last month the World Health Organization said that it had decided to rename monkeypox as "mpox" to curb "racist and stigmatizing language" surrounding the disease.
Both mpox and monkeypox will be used by the WHO for a year as the former term is phased out, according to the organization, which is responsible for assigning names to global diseases.
