Rabies natural history

Rabies has many natural reservoirs in animals such as raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. This disease has been known about for times as far back as Greek and Roman records. Rabies is a very serious disease that has a very grim prognosis. There is a vaccine to protect against the detrimental virus, which most people have received. In unvaccinated individuals, rabies is typically fatal.

Natural History
Rabies virus causes an acute encephalitis in all warm-blooded hosts, including humans, and the outcome is almost always fatal. Although all species of mammals are susceptible to rabies virus infection, only a few species are important as reservoirs for the disease. In the United States, several distinct rabies virus variants have been identified in terrestrial mammals, including raccoons, skunks, foxes, and coyotes. In addition to these terrestrial reservoirs, several species of insectivorous bats are also reservoirs for rabies.

People have known about rabies for a long time, although the virus itself was not seen under the electron microscope until the 1960s. Rabies in animals was reported in early Babylonian, Greek, and Roman records. Rabies was likely brought to the Americas when settlers first came from Europe, bringing rabid animals with them.

A 9-year-old boy was the first person to have received an effective shot for rabies. In 1885, Joseph Meister was bitten by a rabid dog. His parents went to the famous French biologist Louis Pasteur. They begged him to help their son. Pasteur thought that if he injected a weak form of virus from one rabid animal into another, the second animal might be able to fight off the disease. He tried this hypothesis out on Joseph. The boy survived and lived a long life. That was how people starting giving shots for rabies.

After this success. other rabies vaccines were made. In the 1950s, people who had been bitten by a rabid animal got 23 shots along the abdomen. Today, the shots are more effective and less painful. They consist of a series of 6 shots given in the arm over a 1 month period. One shot is given around the bite and the rest are given in the arm.

Prognosis
Treatment after exposure (receiving the vaccines), known as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), is highly successful in preventing the disease if administered promptly, in general within ten days of infection. Begun with little or no delay, PEP is 100% effective against rabies. In the case in which there has been a significant delay in administering PEP, the treatment should be administered regardless of that delay, as it may still be effective.

In unvaccinated humans, rabies is usually fatal after neurological symptoms have developed, but prompt post-exposure vaccination may prevent the virus from progressing. Rabies kills around 55,000 people a year, mostly in Asia and Africa.

Survival data using the Milwaukee protocol are available from the rabies registry. As of 2011, seven people have been saved by this induced coma treatment.