Mpox (monkeypox) Virus, Disease, Vaccine Overview – Embase

Background

On 13th August 2024, the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (African CDC) issued a public health warning, highlighting the spread of a particular strain of the mpox virus (formerly called the monkeypox virus). (1) The next day, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the mpox (monkeypox) outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern. (2)

Wary of the informational challenges presented only just recently by the onset and impact of the covid 19 pandemic, researchers, health care professionals and policy decision makers all have a pressing need to acquire up to date information on mpox. Be it the virus, the disease or the vaccine or vaccines.

Nomenclature Changes
Locating information relating to mpox has its own unique challenges as the description of the virus and disease has undergone a nomenclature change. On 28th November 2022, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended a new name for monkeypox disease, namely ‘mpox’. (3) The recommended change was in keeping with the 2015 WHO publication on best practices in naming diseases. 

“According to these best practices, new disease names should be given with the aim to minimize unnecessary negative impact of names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”(3)

However, the name of the virus would remain unchanged – for the time being – to reflect its use in scientific literature. And in doing so, to continue to make relevant documents discoverable and retrievable. Biomedical databases, reflecting scientific publications and their terminological use over decades, have also used the term ‘monkeypox’ in their controlled vocabularies. For database searchers, be they novices or experienced searchers, this semantic transition from old to new, has consequences for database search query design.

Search Blocks
This Focused Search presents three search blocks that will help you quickly locate scientific literature on mpox, and that on the virus, the disease and vaccines, respectively. For ease of initial viewing the three search blocks are listed as a single search history which can be viewed via the Actions / Display option. The same search can be run directly in Ovid by clicking on Actions / Launch.

Search Design
Although listed in the Focused Search as a sequence of three searches, the search blocks were individually designed, constructed and tested. Their construction followed the conventional concept search approach of a database thesaurus search followed by a free term search, followed by the combination of the thesaurus and free term search using the Boolean operator, OR.

In all three cases, the thesaurus term’s Scope Note was used as the initial source of free terms. This was done in anticipation of a degree of similar coverage between the thesaurus term and its kindred free terms. However, where the Scope Note omitted terms or listed terms that, when tested were not found in the scientific literature, the free term search expression was amended accordingly. The details for each of the three search blocks are given in the table below.

Mpox (monkeypox) Virus, Disease, Vaccine Overview – Embase
Search Block	Ovid Rendering	Notes
Virus	< Launch on Ovid >	1. No exp used as the Emtree term has no narrower terms. 2. Used For list very specific, so supplemented (#3) with MeSH. 3. This search has 2 lines of free term search expressions.
Disease	< Launch on Ovid >	1. No exp used as the Emtree term has no narrower terms. 2. Used For list very specific, not supplemented with MeSH. 3. In line #2 (free term), the first 270 references are preprints.
Vaccine	< Launch on Ovid >	1. No exp used as the Emtree term has no narrower terms. 2. Used For list very specific, so supplemented (#3) with MeSH. 3. In Emtree term ‘smallpox vaccine’, no reference to ‘mpox’.

The search blocks were peer reviewed by members of the Ovid Training Team

Search Assistance
The purpose of this Focused Search is to help kick-start your searches related to mpox, the virus, the disease and the vaccine(s). And this, for your own purposes as well as to help you assist those you advise and teach. By saving these blocks (with your own amendments and changes) in My Workspace you could combine them with Clinical Queries, for example. Or with respect to the vaccine, with the EMA’s search filter on adverse events. If you would like further assistance on or with this Focused Search, as well as on any aspects related to it, please click on Actions / Ovid Coaching and an Ovid Trainer will contact you. Alternatively, please send an e-mail to us at [email protected] .
 

Search Stategy

Copy Strategy Launch Search

Reviewers

Primary: Michael Fanning

Secondary: Charlotte Viken

Review Date: 2024-08-19

Expiry Date: 2025-08-19

Original search produced by:

Ovid Training Team

References:

(1). Africa CDC Declares Mpox A Public Health Emergency of Continental Security, Mobilizing Resources Across the Continent
https://africacdc.org/news-item/africa-cdc-declares-mpox-a-public-health-emergency-of-continental-security-mobilizing-resources-across-the-continent/

(2). WHO Director-General declares mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern
https://www.who.int/news/item/14-08-2024-who-director-general-declares-mpox-outbreak-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern

(3). WHO recommends new name for monkeypox disease (28th November 2022)
https://www.who.int/news/item/28-11-2022-who-recommends-new-name-for-monkeypox-disease

(4). WHO Fact Sheets - Mpox (monkeypox)
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/monkeypox

(5). UK NHS on Mpox
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/mpox/

(6). US CDC on Mpox
https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/mpox/index.html

(7). DE RKI on Mpox
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/A/Affenpocken/Ausbruch-2022-Situation-Deutschland.html

 

Citation:

OvidGO! Portal. Focused Searches: Mpox (monkeypox) Virus, Disease, Vaccine Overview – Embase [Internet]. London (UK): Ovid Training Team (Editors); 2024 [updated 25 October 2024; cited 30 October 2024]. Available from: https://tools.ovid.com/ovidgo/searches/view.php?id=79