Recently, it was reported that a 48-year-old Shengzhou man went to Hangzhou Hospital for medical treatment and died after being diagnosed with rabies in only 3 days!
The man sought medical attention on the evening of March 27, and according to his description, he had a low-grade fever for several days, he was afraid of the wind, and when he blew it, he felt tightness in his chest and throat, and he always felt thirsty, but he was afraid to drink water.
During the visit, the man also appeared restless and had difficulty sitting still.
The doctor initially judged that it was rabies, so he asked if he had been bitten by a cat or dog before, or had his skin scratched, but the man denied it.
To test his diagnosis, the doctor ordered a laboratory test that found rabies virus in his cerebrospinal fluid.
Three days later, the doctor called back, but unfortunately, the man had died, and his wife also revealed a detail: "He was bitten by a dog a few years ago!"
After the news came out, it immediately became a hot search.
"I bit a few years ago, and now I still have a seizure, is the incubation period for rabies so long?"
"I'm sure it's rabies, why did I let the man go, why didn't the doctor treat it?
"No wonder I've always heard people say that rabies can have an incubation period of up to 19 years, and this time I believe it. ”
Don't be in a hurry to make a judgment, you can learn about rabies first.
Rabies virus
Neurotropic virus, once onset, has a fatality rate of almost 100%
Rabies, a zoonotic disease, is caused by rabies virus infection.
It is so named because 99% of rabies cases are caused directly by dog bites or scratches.
Globally, the largest number of cases are found in Africa and Asia. In the Americas, dogs are well controlled, with the rabies virus mainly coming from bat bites, with only 5% coming from dogs.
Rabies, once it occurs, has a fatality rate of almost 100% because:
The rabies virus infects the nerves, the incubation period is asymptomatic, and there is no very effective way to detect the virus, which is easy to ignore.
Route of infection
The onset of rabies progresses into four stages:
Incubation period: If a person is bitten by a sick animal and does not receive timely vaccination intervention, the virus will enter the human body with the saliva of the sick animal, and the human wound will be exposed and licked by the sick animal will also be infected.
At this time, the human body is asymptomatic.
But the virus is not idle, it invades from the wound, first multiplies locally, and then travels throughout the body with the nerves, with the ultimate goal being the brain.
During the incubation period, the virus silently does not "attack" the human body because it has not yet occupied major locations (such as the spinal cord and brain).
Phobic symptoms
Symptoms: In the early stage, patients will experience symptoms such as fatigue, headache, and fever, and although the bite site has been healed, most people will feel itchy at this time.
Gradually, symptoms such as fear, excitement, insomnia, and anxiety will appear.
Manic phase: During this period, typical symptoms of rabies will appear, such as fear of wind, hydrophobia, difficulty swallowing, not daring to drink water, and drinking water without quenching thirst.
The appearance of these symptoms means that the virus has invaded the brain, and after it takes over the salivary glands of the body, it secretes a large amount of saliva in order to make more viruses (there is virus in saliva);
Under its control, patients are afraid to drink water and will behave aggressively because drinking water will dilute the virus content, and at the same time, aggressive behaviors such as bites are the most effective way to spread the virus.
It can be said that the ultimate goal of the virus is to reproduce and spread.
Quiet period of near death
Coma phase: After the manic period, the body will eventually enter a quiet state.
This is because in the late stage, the vital organs of the human body are seriously damaged, and most of the basic functions can no longer be maintained, resulting in limb paralysis, and the virus has also achieved the purpose of reproduction and spread. After a few days, the patient will die.
In some cases, the virus sometimes does not have a good grasp of the lethality, and the infection is very violent at the beginning, resulting in some patients not experiencing a manic period, and directly entering the most severe paralysis and paralysis stage.
The man mentioned at the beginning was actually in a manic period and died 3 days after seeking medical treatment, which is also in line with the onset of rabies.
Generally speaking, the onset of rabies is only 7-10 days, and eventually death due to respiratory tract and organ failure.
What is the longest incubation period for rabies?
In general, the incubation period for rabies is 1-3 months from infection to the onset of symptoms.
The length of the incubation period actually refers to the spread time of the virus, and it has many constraints, such as:
The location of the bite, closer to the brain, the path is obviously shorter, and the incubation period is shorter;
If the animal reaches the manic stage, it means that the concentration of virus in the saliva is high and the number is large, and if it is bitten, more virus will enter the wound, and the incubation period will be shorter;
There are many types of rabies virus, and the onset time of different types will vary.
It is precisely because of the unique nature of rabies that there are some rare and extreme cases.
According to past statistics, the incubation period is less than 1 month (the shortest is 4 days), accounting for 30%, 1-3 months, 54%, more than 3 months, 15%, and more than 1 year.
The following cases are available in the literature:
1. "A Human Rabies Case with a Long Incubation Period in Wuhan", released on November 4, 2020, a 63-year-old Wuhan woman became ill on May 6, 2018, and was bitten by a dog 3 years ago;
2. "Phylogenetic and Epidemiological Evidence of Human Rabies Latent for Many Years", released on January 23, 2014, a man was diagnosed 8 years after immigrating to the United States from Brazil, and the virus isolated from his body was a Latin American dog rabies strain, which is not available in the United States, so it was confirmed that his rabies incubation period was as long as 8 years. Before he left Brazil, he disposed of canine carcasses.
3. "The incubation period of rabies virus encephalitis may be as long as 25 years!", published in July-September 2012, a 48-year-old male in India suffered a rabies attack in November 2009, and he himself described that he was bitten on the leg 25 years ago. The researchers investigated men's work and home environments, as well as interpersonal relationships. According to the surveys that have been conducted, it is very likely that the incubation period of 25 years is very high (not 100% certain).
It can be seen that there are still cases of rabies with an incubation period of more than ten years.
However, most scientists still believe that the incubation period of rabies is more than ten years, which is not supported by scientific evidence.
Because there are too few such cases, and many cases are too long, there are phenomena such as lax investigations, and patients themselves forget to make mistakes.
At last
It is important to note that people only get sick if they are bitten by an animal that has the rabies virus in their body and the virus enters the human body. If you get vaccinated and intervened in time after the bite, you can also prevent the onset of the disease 100%.
People who have a fluke mentality often miss the best cure period because of this, and when they get sick, the medicine is basically ineffective.
But there are also people cured, and the global data on rabies cures is 29 people in 2019.
It may be that these people are tenacious, or they may be lucky, and they survived in the end, but the price is the sequelae.
Unfortunately, their treatment experience cannot be replicated. The same treatment has completely different effects on different people, so it cannot be generalized.
In other words, at the current level of science, the fatality rate of rabies is still 100%.
But I believe that it will not be long before rabies is conquered, and Chinese scientists have already found a genetic switch to inhibit the rabies virus a few years ago.