A biting animal that's caught can be tested to see the virus is in its brain, but it must be euthanized put to sleep first. If it's a healthy pet, such as a dog, cat, or ferret, experts recommend watching the animal for 10 days to see if it gets sick. If it's a rabbit, rodent, or other small animal that doesn't usually spread rabies, a doctor can check with the local health department to decide what to do.
If rabies symptoms start, there is no effective treatment. This is why doctors focus on prevention and try to stop the disease right after a person is exposed. Anyone who thinks they may have been exposed to the rabies virus must get medical care right away. Larger text size Large text size Regular text size. What Is Rabies? Rabies is a rare but serious disease caused by a virus.
It affects the nerves and brain. After a few days, neurological symptoms develop, including: irritability or aggressiveness excessive movements or agitation confusion, bizarre or strange thoughts, or hallucinations muscle spasms and unusual postures seizures convulsions weakness or paralysis when a person cannot move some part of the body extreme sensitivity to bright lights, sounds, or touch Someone with rabies can produce a lot of saliva spit , and muscle spasms in their throat might make it hard to swallow.
What Causes Rabies? Is Rabies Contagious? How Is Rabies Diagnosed? How Is Rabies Treated? As with most vaccines the most common side effect is soreness and redness at the site of the injection.
More severe reactions are rare and often related to allergies to the ingredients in the vaccine. Contact your health care provider if you are having any health effects which you think might be related to the vaccine. No, the rabies vaccine has not been given in the stomach since the s. For adults, it should only be given in the deltoid muscle of the upper arm administration to the gluteal area is NOT recommended, as studies have shown this can result in a less effective immune response.
For children, the anterolateral aspect of the thigh is also an acceptable site depending on the child's age and body mass. Rabies immunoglobulin is recommended to be given at the site of the bite, if possible.
Ideally, the vaccination series should begin as soon as possible after an exposure has occurred and a health care provider has determined rabies vaccination is warranted. Usually you can wait for test results from a healthy domestic animal to see if rabies shots are needed. Bites and exposures from wild animals should be treated as if the animal were rabid until rabies has been ruled out.
There have been instances when a person did not start rabies shots for months after an exposure because the exposure was never suspected. Rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin is very expensive. As a local law enforcement official, what can I do protect the public from rabies? If your jurisdiction has rabies vaccination ordinances and leash laws, enforcing these ordinances will help reduce the risk of rabies in your communities.
Enforcing the proper confinement of animals that have bitten a person helps ensure that the animal will not escape during the observation period, so a veterinarian can declare the animal in question healthy.
It also minimizes the risk for other people or animals to be exposed to the confined animal and helps prevent people from getting unneeded rabies shots. Please contact one of the labs for more information. Humanely destroy the animal, avoiding damage to the skull and brain. This should be done by a professional such as a veterinarian. Only a veterinarian or other trained professional should remove the head and extract the brain leaving the brain stem intact.
The animal that I was exposed to has been dead for a while, can it still be tested? Consult with your veterinarian to determine if the animal can still be tested.
If it has been cold, the animal may still be testable. However, brain tissue decomposes rapidly, especially in warm temperatures, and it may be too decomposed to test. If you have any other questions about rabies submit them here or call How is rabies transmitted? What are the symptoms of rabies in people? What are symptoms of rabies in animals? Why can a healthy domestic dog, cat, or ferret be held for ten days?
Why can't the ten-day observation period be used for other animals? What if the animal is not available for observation or testing? NDDoH Rabies Exposure Assessment Algorithm PDF If you have been bitten or otherwise exposed to the saliva of an animal that is not available for observation or testing, contact your physician, local public health unit or state public health department and local law enforcement.
Does an animal have to be destroyed to be tested for rabies? How can I protect myself from rabies? Are there any vaccines for wild or hybrid animals? What if I have livestock exposed to rabies? What if I am bitten by a mouse or gopher? If the infection is not stopped at this point, the virus will eventually invade the nerve cells in that area. Once the virus is in the nerve tissue, it travels along the nerve to the brain, where it continues to multiply. The virus may then spread along nerves from the brain to the salivary glands or other parts of the body.
Rabies remains a dreaded disease because it is almost always fatal, plus it is accompanied by distressing clinical signs and symptoms; however, if rabies postexposure prophylaxis PEP is administered before the virus enters the nervous system, it can be prevented. Despite its severity, there is still much the public and even health professionals may not know about rabies.
Rabies is a disease based in antiquity. Since it has been noted since ancient times and is relatively rare in humans in the US, it is oftentimes a forgotten disease not only by the general public but also as a differential in medical diagnoses.
However, rabies is not as rare as most people think, and it remains a disease of public health significance. In the United States, there were 5, cases of laboratory-confirmed rabies cases in animals reported to the CDC in However, the number of cases in humans is low in the US, with an average of two to three a year, according to the CDC. The low number of cases compared with that in many developing countries is attributable to two key factors:. All warm-blooded animals, particularly mammals, can acquire rabies, but some are more likely to transmit it than others.
The CDC estimates that worldwide, 90 percent of exposures are due to rabid dogs; those exposures cause 99 percent of the human deaths. In the US, the most commonly reported rabid animal is the raccoon, followed by skunks and bats.
The prevalent species that are transmitting rabies can vary from state to state. For instance, in Texas, animals defined as being high risk for transmitting rabies are skunks, bats, foxes, coyotes, and raccoons. Low-risk animals for transmitting rabies include rabbits, opossums and armadillos, plus mice, rats, squirrels, nutria, shrews, prairie dogs, beavers, gophers, and other rodents if they are caged-raised animals, they are considered very low risk.
These animals have a good potential of not surviving an attack by a rabid animal. However, that is not the case all of the time, as Texas just had a rabid rabbit in August, which reportedly was attacked in its outdoor hutch by a skunk about five weeks prior to its death. When many people visualize a rabid animal, they picture the foaming-at-the-mouth movie images of Cujo.
However, the most typical signs of rabies are unexplained paralysis and a change in behavior. For instance, a friendly cat may become very aggressive, a normally playful puppy may become shy and withdrawn, and a nocturnal animal may be out during the day.
There is a plethora of other clinical signs that a rabid animal may or may not exhibit, such as not eating, eating strange non-food objects, pawing at the mouth, appearing to be choking, having difficulty swallowing, chewing at the site of the bite, having seizures, and exhibiting hypersensitivities to touch or sound, to name a few. There are many tips you can follow to avoid being bitten and potentially exposed to rabies, such as:.
If a bite does occur, wash the bite wound immediately with soap and water and iodine if available and you are not allergic ; promptly seek medical attention and guidance from a physician; and take rabies PEP if prescribed by a physician.
The physician may also prescribe antibiotics and a tetanus vaccination depending on the nature of the bite and the circumstances of the bitten person. Note that the PEP regime no longer features the much-feared extensive treatment of vaccinations in the stomach, but consists of a dose of human rabies immune globulin based on weight and a series of 4 vaccinations 5 vaccinations for immunocompromised individuals in the deltoid area over a month period. If you are traveling to a foreign area with enzootic rabies, you should consult with a physician about getting pre-exposure vaccinations as well.
Bite and non-bite exposures from an infected person could theoretically transmit rabies, but no such cases have been documented. Casual contact, such as touching a person with rabies or contact with non-infectious fluid or tissue urine, blood, feces , is not associated with risk for infection. Contact with someone who is receiving rabies vaccination does not constitute rabies exposure, does not pose a risk for infection, and does not require postexposure prophylaxis.
Rabies virus becomes noninfectious when it dries out and when it is exposed to sunlight. Different environmental conditions affect the rate at which the virus becomes inactive, but in general, if the material containing the virus is dry, the virus can be considered noninfectious.
All mammals can get rabies, but only a few species are important as reservoirs for the disease. In the United States, distinct strains of rabies virus have been identified in bats, raccoons, skunks, foxes, and mongooses.
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