55,000 people die from rabies each year, and this is likely an underestimation of infection.
Rabies 101
What the virus does when it enters a susceptible host:
1. Transmission: Bite or scratch with infected saliva, or infected saliva or nerve tissue contacts eyes or mucous membranes -> 2. Muscle (virus replicates) -> acetylcholine receptor at neuromuscular junction -> motor neuron axons-> 3. Centripetal, retrograde axoplasmic flow to spinal ganglia -> 4. Spinal cord, ventral horn or brainstem motor nuclei -> 5. Centrifugal spread along peripheral nerves to viscera, skin, eyes, brown fat, and salivary glands. Total incubation time is typically 30-90 days Key points about the disease: • Presentation: *Highly Variable between individuals and species. Common clinical signs: progressive irritability, spasmodic chomping, convulsive seizures, hyperesthesia, paresis and paralysis. The “furious” behavior reported in some cases refers to infection of the limbic system. Pharyngeal paralysis results in hypersalivation. • Rabies is usually fatal in 7-10 days, but death may occur in as little as 3 days. • All vaccines labeled in the US are killed. • Gross lesions are not present but clues include evidence of self-mutilation and gastrointestinal foreign bodies. Rabies diagnosis: Diagnosis: Identification of Negri bodies within neurons on histologic examination of brain tissue; Fluorescent antibody test on brain tissue with intracranial inoculation of mice. More links within this site on rabies:
Education ->Community Outreach -> Rabies Outreach Neuropathology ->Inflammation/Infection -> scroll down to find a rabies case description and histopathology |
This photo kindly provided by Gennifer Reed; GenSafaris
An interesting story behind the first rabies vaccine from: NATURE | COMMENT History: Great myths die hard. Héloïse D. Dufour & Sean B. Carroll. 02 October 2013
How Meister died. In July 1885, a 9-year-old French boy named Joseph Meister was badly bitten by a rabid dog, and faced near-certain death. Instead, young Meister entered medical history: he was Louis Pasteur's first human patient to be treated and saved by a rabies vaccine. For more than half a century, accounts of the story in both English and French have been given a dramatic ending. In 1940, 55 years after his life was saved, Meister was serving as a gatekeeper at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. The story goes that when German forces invaded Paris in June that year, soldiers arrived at the institute demanding access to Pasteur's tomb and, rather than surrender his saviour's resting place to the Nazis, the 64-year-old Meister killed himself. Two years ago, while researching life in occupied Paris for a book on biologist Jacques Monod8, we came across a contemporaneous diary by Eugene Wollman in the archives of the Pasteur Institute9. Wollman was head of the institute's bacteriophage lab and resident on site, and his entries directly contradict the popularized accounts of Meister's suicide. The diary reveals that the date, means and motive have each been altered in the making of a myth. In the widely repeated narrative, Meister killed himself on 14 June or 16 June, just after the German invasion of France. But on 24 June, ten days after the Germans entered Paris, Wollman wrote: “This morning, Meister was found dead.” It is often reported that Meister shot himself, but Wollman stated: “He committed suicide with gas.” Some sources note that Meister committed suicide because he could not bear the idea of the Nazis profaning Pasteur's tomb. Wollman makes no mention of any such incident. Instead, he indicates that Meister was “very depressed” and that “his wife and children had left”. Like millions of others, they had fled Paris ahead of the onrushing German army. Our interest piqued, we scoured published accounts of Meister's death, as well as several written sources in the Pasteur Institute's archives and museum. Moreover, Marie-José Demouron, Meister's granddaughter, kindly granted us an interview. Together, these sources confirm Wollman's version and shed further light on the motive for Meister's suicide. Meister apparently believed that his family had perished in enemy bombing, and was overwhelmed with guilt for having sent them away (M.-J. Demouron, personal communication). In the chaos of France's collapse, it was almost impossible to get news from loved ones, so Meister was unaware that they were safe. His wife and daughters actually returned later on the very day that he killed himself. As Wollman noted: “Life has an extraordinarily refined cruelty.” • Dubos, R. Louis Pasteur: Free Lance of Science (Little, Brown, 1950). Show context • 'Journal d'Eugene Wollman', Pasteur Institute Archives, fond Eugene Wollman, cote WLL1.A.1. Show context • 'Mort de Joseph Meister', note by Marneffe, H., Pasteur Institute Archives, fond Hubert Marnette, cote MRF. ARC.13 (copy by H. Marneffe of notes taken by Noel Bernard). Show context • 'A propos du suicide de Joseph Meister', note by Perrot, A., Museum of the Pasteur Institute. Show context |
Multimedia related to Rabies
Rabies video:
The video below covers clinical symptoms of rabies in humans and animals.
(Other videos can be found on the Rabies Outreach page)
The video below covers clinical symptoms of rabies in humans and animals.
(Other videos can be found on the Rabies Outreach page)
Rabies articles and web sites:
Rabies blueprint - a site concerned with the control and erradication of rabies in dog populations - http://www.rabiesblueprint.com/
| feline_rabies_france.pdf |
| risk_for_rabies_importation_from_north_africa.webarchive |
| rabies_importation.pdf |
| rabies_in_finland.pdf |
