Is rabies incurable?

Rabies is the most ferocious and viral of all infectious diseases. Once it breaks out, there is currently no treatment method, and it may even cause unnecessary trouble or complications. After being bitten by an animal, be sure to clean the wound in time. If the animal is found to be a stray, you need to go to the hospital for vaccination, because vaccination within 72 hours can reduce the chance of rabies attack.

Rabies treatment

Rabies is the most dangerous viral disease of all infectious diseases. Once it occurs, the prognosis is extremely poor. There is no specific treatment so far. Many new drugs such as interferon α, adenosine, transfer factor and high-dose human anti-rabies globulin have been used clinically, but all have failed. Therefore, it is emphasized that timely preventive treatment should be given after a bite, and comprehensive symptomatic treatment should be the main treatment for patients after the onset of the disease.

(1) After being bitten by an animal, the wound should be treated as follows: Immediately wash the wound with soap and water, then clean it with 40-70% alcohol or benzyl ammonium chloride (zephiran). Be careful not to suture the wound.

(2) Strictly isolate the patient in a quiet, dimly lit single room to avoid unnecessary stimulation. Strictly disinfect the patient's excrement, etc. to prevent contamination from saliva, etc.

(3) Start the full course of vaccination as soon as possible: There are four commonly used rabies vaccines: inactivated sheep brain tissue vaccine (Semple's vaccine), duck embryo vaccine, inactivated dairy animal brain tissue vaccine and tissue culture vaccine. The first three have been used for a long time and are the roughest biological products. They contain a large amount of non-viral antigens, which can cause serious or even fatal complications such as encephalomyelitis and meningitis. Their immunogenicity is low, so they need to be injected for a long time. Therefore, the use of tissue culture vaccines, such as hamster kidney vaccine, fetal bovine kidney vaccine, chicken embryo cell vaccine and human diploid cell vaccine, is currently advocated. Among them, human diploid cell vaccine is the best, not only has good preventive effect, but also has no serious adverse reactions. If you have received a full course of other rabies vaccines in the past, you only need one injection. The hamster kidney vaccine currently produced in China is similar to this and deserves widespread use. If the bite is severe, with multiple wounds or wounds on the head, face, neck or fingers, anti-rabies serum should be injected at the same time as the vaccination. When anti-rabies serum is used in combination, the antitoxin in the serum can neutralize the free virus in the body in time, prevent the spread of the virus, and relatively prolong the incubation period of rabies, so that the body has enough time to produce its own antibodies and reduce the chance of disease.

Allergy testing should be done when using anti-rabies serum. Because immune serum can neutralize free viruses, it can also reduce the rate of virus reproduction and spread in cells, prolong the incubation period, and gain time for the production of automatic antibodies, thereby improving the efficacy of the vaccine. The application of anti-rabies serum can inhibit the titer of auto-antibodies and delay their production time. The method of anti-rabies serum injection is half intramuscular injection and half peri-wound infiltration injection. People who have frequent contact with rabies virus, sick animals or patients should receive pre-infection vaccination. The rabies vaccine should be injected intramuscularly once on days 0, 3, 7, 14 and 28, for a total of 5 injections. 0 refers to the day of the first injection, and so on. If anti-rabies serum is needed, it is best to use it the day before or on the day of vaccine use, and booster injections should be given on the 10th and 20th days after the full course of 5 injections. Rabies vaccine and serum injections should be timely, complete and sufficient.