The U.S. saw more than 20,000 mpox cases and nearly six dozen deaths during the 2022 global mpox outbreak. San Francisco was hard hit. Today, mpox remains an ongoing public health emergency, according to the World Health Organization.
During the 2022 outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed physicians to prescribe it to some patients for investigational medications purposes given the lack of any approved treatments. Most physicians prescribed tecovirimat, also called TPOXX, for mpox patients - a medicine known to be effective against a close cousin of mpox, smallpox.
But did it work? Within two months of the outbreak's start, UC San Francisco became one of the lead sites for an international clinical trial to find out. We spoke to Annie Luetkemeyer , MD, the head of UCSF's Advancing Clinical Trials Globally (ACTG) unit
