Rabies: Humboldt girl beats virus against odds

[XemaSab]

Three weeks ago, 8-year-old Precious Reynolds had rabies. She was comatose in the UC Davis Children's Hospital - as sick as a little girl can get, her body fighting off a vicious infection that almost no one survives.

Roughly 50,000 people die from rabies worldwide every year, but it's rare for people to develop full-fledged rabies in the United States because stringent animal vaccination regulations have wiped out the disease in dogs and most cats, and because a vaccine given shortly after a person is bitten is highly effective at preventing illness.

But every now and then a person is bitten and doesn't know it, or doesn't get the vaccine. In the United States, most cases of rabies in humans come from bat bites, which are often so small that people don't know they were bitten. In Precious' case, no one knows for sure how she was exposed to rabies, but the most likely culprit is a feral cat she was playing with a few weeks before she became ill.

Rabies can have an incubation period of several years, but Precious became sick just a few weeks after she encountered the cat. At first she had flu-like symptoms, and then she became increasingly weak. By May 1, she was on a ventilator at UC Davis Children's Hospital, where she was diagnosed with encephalitis - inflammation of the brain, usually caused by a viral infection.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/11/MN241JRH8J.DTL#ixzz1PB8w1L6v

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. kick. Hope she continues to improve

[Warpy]

2. That makes three

All were children or young teenagers. All were sedated and put on ventilators. The first one got no antiviral drugs because they hadn't been invented, just supportive treatment while her immune system geared up to fight the virus. Recovery in the first two cases was rapid and complete.

If they can develop a protocol for adults, we'll really have something useful for people who either don't realize an animal has broken their skin through their clothing or who have simply shrugged it off because the animal seemed friendly, like someone's pet (one sign of the disease).

The shots will always be preferable to a couple of weeks in a coma and on a ventilator, but it's good there is a protocol in place for people who don't get the shots in time.

[Scuba]

3. There's hope. Girl here in Wisconsin is now fine after catching rabies from a bat.