What happens when a person gets rabies?

What happens when a person gets rabies?

    What happens when a person gets rabies?

    What happens when a person gets rabies?...
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    • What happens when a person gets rabies?

      What happens when a person gets rabies? Off Topic
      What happens when a person gets rabies?

      What happens when a person gets rabies?

      What happens when a person gets rabies? Off Topic
    • Rabies (pronounced /ˈreɪbiːz/. From Latin: rabies, "madness") is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) in warm-blooded animals.[1] The disease is zoonotic, meaning it can be transmitted from one species to another, such as from dogs to humans, commonly by a bite from an infected animal. For a human, rabies is almost invariably fatal if postexposure prophylaxis is not administered prior to the onset of severe symptoms. The rabies virus infects the central nervous system, ultimately causing disease in the brain and death.The rabies virus travels to the brain by following the peripheral nerves. The incubation period of the disease is usually a few months in humans, depending on the distance the virus must travel to reach the central nervous system.[2] Once the rabies virus reaches the central nervous system and symptoms begin to show, the infection is effectively untreatable and usually fatal within days.Early-stage symptoms of rabies are malaise, headache and fever, progressing to acute pain, violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, depression, and hydrophobia.[1] Finally, the patient may experience periods of mania and lethargy, eventually leading to coma. The primary cause of death is usually respiratory insufficiency.[2]Rabies causes about 55,000 human deaths annually worldwide, mostly in Asia and Africa.[3] Roughly 97% of human rabies cases result from dog bites.[4] In the US, animal control and vaccination programs have effectively eliminated domestic dogs as reservoirs of rabies.[5] In several countries, including Australia and Japan, rabies carried by terrestrial animals has been eliminated entirely.[6] While rabies had once been eradicated in the United Kingdom, infected bats have recently been found in Scotland. [7]Signs and symptomsThe period between infection and the first flu-like symptoms is typically two to 12 weeks, but incubation periods as short as four days and longer than six years have been documented, depending on the location and severity of the inoculating wound and the amount of virus introduced. Soon after, the symptoms expand to slight or partial paralysis, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror, and hallucinations, progressing to delirium.[2][8] Rabies has been called hydrophobia because victims, locally paralyzed and unable to swallow, have been known to become agitated at the sight of water.[9]Death almost invariably results two to 10 days after first symptoms. Once symptoms have presented, survival is rare, even with the administration of proper and intensive care.[10] In 2005 Jeanna Giese, the first patient treated with the Milwaukee protocol,[11] became the first person ever recorded to survive rabies without receiving successful postexposure prophylaxis. An intention to treat analysis has since found this protocol has a survival rate of about 8%.[12] Rabies also causes an irrational fear of water, thus causing dehydration and eventual death.DiagnosisThe reference method for diagnosing rabies is by performing PCR or viral culture on brain samples taken after death. The diagnosis can also be reliably made from skin samples taken before death.[13] Diagnosis can be made from saliva, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid samples, but this is not as sensitive. Cerebral inclusion bodies called Negri bodies are 100% diagnostic for rabies infection but are found in only about 80% of cases.[1] If possible, the animal from which the bite was received should also be examined for rabies.[14]The differential diagnosis in a case of suspected human rabies may initially include any cause of encephalitis, in particular infection with viruses such as herpesviruses, enteroviruses, and arboviruses such as West Nile virus. The most important viruses to rule out are herpes simplex virus type one, varicella-zoster virus, and (less commonly) enteroviruses, including coxsackieviruses, echoviruses, polioviruses, and human enteroviruses 68 to 71.[15]New causes of viral encephalitis are also possible, as was evidenced by the 1999 outbreak in Malaysia of 300 cases of encephalitis with a mortality rate of 40% caused by Nipah virus, a newly recognized paramyxovirus.[16] Likewise, well-known viruses may be introduced into new locales, as is illustrated by the recent outbreak of encephalitis due to West Nile virus in the eastern US.[17] Epidemiologic factors, such as season, geographic location, and the patient's age, travel history, and possible exposure to bites, rodents, and ticks, may help direct the diagnosis.Cheaper rabies diagnosis will become possible for low-income settings: accurate rabies diagnosis can be done at a tenth of the cost of traditional testing using basic light microscopy techniques.[18]