Rabies

Abstract

Even in these days of modern plagues such as AIDS and Ebola virus disease, rabies is regarded with terror. Undoubtedly much of the terror derives from the inexorable death that follows after the development of symptoms and the long incubation period that leaves dangling the risk of rabies for months and even years. Although we are now very successful at preventing rabies after known exposure, neither the pathogenesis of disease nor the mechanism of protection is completely understood, which adds interest for the scientist. Moreover, for the public health professional, rabies is a headache both in developed countries where the occasional case causes panic and in developing countries where control of the disease in dogs is elusive. Rabies is an ancient disease that remains a modern problem in much of the developing world and in the United States, where the disease is enzootic in bats and wild terrestrial mammals.