Why can't rabies be cured?

Rabies has always been a relatively serious disease. After rabies occurs, it is mostly difficult to treat because if the vaccine is not given in time within 24 hours, it will be too late to get vaccinated when the rabies fully breaks out. Therefore, as long as the slightest symptom of rabies appears, you should actively go to the hospital for examination and treatment, and you will recover soon.

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.