March 23, 2007
Rabies!
There's a good article in the April issue of Scientific American about a Wisconsin girl, a high school sophomore, who survived rabies. (Alas, the article is not available online.)
She was bitten by a rabid bat during a church service and didn't seek treatment, apparently thinking that because she washed the wound thoroughly she would be OK. About a month later she began exhibiting numbness and weakness, was admitted to a hospital, and was finally diagnosed as having rabies. (Moral: church won't protect you from rabid bats.)
Normally a diagnosis of rabies is a death sentence, as only five other people have ever recovered from the disease, and each of them had been given the vaccine before exhibiting symptoms. When the rabies virus first enters the body (usually through a bite from an infected animal), the virus remains under the radar of the body's defenses. During this period the patient does not display any symptoms. Only after the virus has migrated into the brain, a journey that usually takes a few weeks, does the patient began to show symptoms. By this time the body's defenses do notice the virus and begin their attack, but too late; the patient is usually dead within a week.
Victims suffer painful throat spasms when they try to drink or eat. Paralysis follows, yet people infected with rabies are intermittently alert until near death and can communicate their fear and suffering to family and caregivers.
The virus forces the body's cells to manufacture five proteins, which in turn cause the brain to malfunction and sabotage vital organs. The doctors at Children's Hospital in Milwaukee, led by Rodney Willoughby, decided to put the girl into a coma to prevent her brain from damaging her body. Meanwhile, they also administered an antiviral drug, which they hoped would fight the virus until her body could manufacture its own antibodies.
It's a terrific story, and the girl, Jeanna Giese, made a full recovery with only a few minor after-effects.
Posted by jt at March 23, 2007 03:45 PM