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Vets caution residents after rabies scare
Submitted by Medill News Service on Thu, 08/16/2007 - 2:47pm.
By Elisabeth Kilpatrick
Medill Reports - Chicago
Avoid contact with wild animals and keep pets current on their rabies vaccinations.
That's the advice from state officials in response to the increasing numbers of confirmed rabid bats in Illinois this year.
"Because we have infringed upon the wild populations considerably, [pet] exposure is always a possibility," said Cheryl Johnson, supervising veterinarian for Morgan Park Animal Hospital. "It's really foolish not to have them vaccinated."
As of Thursday, 58 bats have tested positive for rabies in the state for 2007, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. More than half of those cases have come from the six-county Chicagoland area, including 11 in Cook County.
This year has easily eclipsed 2006 totals, when 46 bats tested positive for rabies. Incidences show no signs of slowing down yet, since August is prime time for bat activity.
Vaccinations are crucial for protecting pets from rabies infection. Pets that aren't vaccinated and come into contact with a rabid animal must either be professionally quarantined for six months or euthanized.
"If that pet gets into some kind of skirmish with a wild animal or a stray," Johnson said, "and the vaccination history is not known, absolutely we require that the pet is quarantined. We're really prohibited to give the vaccine after the fact."
People bitten by any animal with rabies must have a series of vaccinations to avoid onset of the fatal disease.
Earlier this month, four family members in Will County began rabies vaccinations after discovering a bat in a bedroom which turned out to be rabid. Vaccinations are always recommended when rabid bats are found in bedrooms, since people can be exposed to a nip from the bat's fine teeth while asleep and not even know it.
The state doesn't track human vaccinations, but "it happens more than we'd like," said Connie Austin, state public health veterinarian for IDPH.
The rabies virus attacks the nervous system, which doesn't have the immune properties to fight off disease. Rabies is almost always fatal once it develops. Early symptoms in humans include pain or numbness in the area of the bite, fever, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, agitation and aggressive behavior.
Later symptoms include paralysis, throat spasms, coma and irregular heartbeat, leading to death within a few days. No human has died from rabies in Illinois since 1954. However, a 10-year-old girl died in Indiana last year after contracting the disease.
"[Attitudes have] become kind of complacent because there are not high incidences occurring," said Kerry Vinkler, executive director of DuPage County Animal Care and Control. "But because it's so severe and non-treatable, we are doing the best we can to monitor the [wild animal] populations we do have."
People see more bats in August when bats are more active, Austin said. "That's when the baby bats start to come out, so that's when people are exposed."
Rabies is transmitted through a bite from an infected animal, and most warm-blooded animals can contract the disease.
Although only bats have tested positive in Illinois in the past two years, all mammals - including skunks, raccoons, dogs and cats - are susceptible to the disease and can carry it.
Despite an apparent rise in rabid animals this year, Austin pointed out that the incidence of rabies in bats remains fairly constant, hovering between an estimated 3-7 percent of the bat population.
"Sometimes when there's publicity about the bats, more people call in to have them tested, which means higher numbers of bats test positive," she said.
Residents have found bats this year in their driveways, backyards and houses. Older homes are especially susceptible to bats, due to gaps in roofs and other entrance points.
Behavior changes are a key sign of rabies. These can include nocturnal animals roaming in daylight or animals seeming aggressive or docile. "What you should inherently see in an animal is that they're afraid of you," Vinkler said.
If a pet is bitten, county animal control departments should be called immediately so that experts can remove it and test for rabies. Call animal control if a wild animal comes into a home or comes into contact with a person or pet outside.
Johnson recommended keeping pets on a leash outside or providing a fenced-in area in the yard where pets are protected from wild animals.
When an animal tests positive for rabies or escapes, people must begin vaccinations immediately. A series of five rabies immune globulin shots in the arm are given over a month.
Rabies is considered 100 percent treatable in humans if rabies vaccinations begin within 14 days of exposure.
Early-stage symptoms of rabies are malaise, headache and fever, progressing to acute pain, violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, depression, and hydrophobia. Finally, the patient may experience periods of mania and lethargy, eventually leading to coma. The primary cause of death is usually respiratory insufficiency. Worldwide, the vast majority of human rabies cases (approximately 97%) come from dog bites. In the United States, however, animal control and vaccination programs have effectively eliminated domestic dogs as reservoirs of rabies. In several countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, the virus has been eradicated entirely.
The period between infection and the first flu-like symptoms is normally two to twelve weeks, but can be as long as two years. Soon after, the symptoms expand to slight or partial paralysis, cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror, hallucinations, progressing to delirium. The production of large quantities of saliva and tears coupled with an inability to speak or swallow are typical during the later stages of the disease; this can result in hydrophobia, in which the patient has difficulty swallowing because the throat and jaw become slowly paralyzed, shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot quench his or her thirst.
Comment: Rabies is a viral disease
Submitted by ccnp training (not verified) on Thu, 03/18/2010 - 5:47am.Rabies is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) in warm-blooded animals. It is zoonotic (i.e., transmitted by animals), most commonly by a bite from an infected animal but occasionally by other forms of contact. Rabies is almost invariably fatal if post-exposure prophylaxis is not administered prior to the onset of severe symptoms.
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. Once the rabies virus reaches the central nervous system and symptoms begin to show, the infection is effectively untreatable and usually fatal within days.