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15-Year-Old Girl Survives Rabies Infection
An anonymous reader writes "A 15 y.o. girl in Wisconsin is the first known survivor of a rabies infection who did not receive the vaccine. She was placed into an induced coma while doctors gave her a cocktail of drugs to help her immune system fight the infection. (For those of us who don't realize this, rabies is considered 100% fatal once symptoms appear)."
Scary shit.
More details about this story here.
..her family prayed. /me rolls eyes
"only three people in the world are known to have survived after the onset of rabies symptoms"
Unless you meant "100% fatal", which would mean those who died would be COMPLETELY dead...
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Probably because it's so expensive..
Yeah, but were the three other people vaccinated?
:) That explains why we vaccinate people against rabbies after the fact: if the virus entered the body far enough from the central nervous system, the vaccine may have enough time to do its job. So, erh, if you ever have to be bitten by a rabid animal, make sure it bites you on the foot and not on the face!
*Adds more content* BTW, rabies has quite an itneresting way of spreading. Our neurons can be a meter long or more, and there's next to no metabolic activity on the axonal end (when compared to the pericaryon, the neuron's body). So, for the rest of the neuron to feed and communicate with the axon, there are two transport systems that go both ways. Rabies simply hitchhikes the slow stream that goes upstream to the pericharyon to travel from the periphery to the middle of the body
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It would be interesting to know a little more about the treatment. If they were using anti-virals, or something that affects the nervous system.
Viruses that I know infect the nerves: Polio, rabies, chickenpox (herpes zoster / shingles), herpes simplex.
There are vaccines for all but the last. Good anti-viral treatments, or anti-virals coctails that work well with nerve viruses might help with h. simplex, or h. zoster outbreaks.
"Well it's not Victory - but then it's not Death either."
>> So, erh, if you ever have to be bitten by a rabid animal, make sure it bites you on the foot and not on the face!
That is very true. My mother (a nurse) treated a boy who was bitten on the face by a rabid dog, many years ago. They kept him on a morphine drip until he died, once he started to show symptoms.
Some clarification: All the other survivors (5, accourding to other news sources) did recieve the vaccine. The developed symptoms, but lived - the only people to do so. Usually, if you get the vaccine, it only works if you never get symptoms. Once you get symptoms, you are pretty much screwed. The virus got to your brain before your immune system killed it.
This girl never even got the vaccine (she was bitten in September, and started to show symptoms more recently). So, she is the first to survive without the vaccine after showing symptoms.
"Well it's not Victory - but then it's not Death either."
You must be from another planet. Come visit earth some time, you'd love it! All our women are insane, and most will start to drool at the mere sight of a shoestore. Should be right up your alley.
On a related note, what are the women on your planet like? None of the girls I know will date me. I think its time I start considering my offworld options...
Any explanation of why they didn't have the vaccine on hand?
It wasn't a case of there not being a vaccine on hand, it's that you need to receive a series of vaccine shots over a period of weeks before symptoms appear, which usually happens weeks later (up to a year in some cases). This girl and/or her family, didn't seek treatment for whatever reason, early enough. Once symptoms appear, all the doctors can do is make you as comfortable as possible. It is considered to be fatal 100% of the time once the symptoms appear.
These doctors tried a whole new approach. Protect the brain as much as possible while letting the body develop its own antibodies. While the girl's body appears to have defeated the virus (our body's self-defenses are amazing!), it's still to be determined how successful the doctors were in preventing brain damage.
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Also, it seems that the symptom profile from bat rabbies is slightly different than the textbook rabbie from rabid dog. The initial spastic phase is somewhat less pronounced with bat rabbies. Anyway, if the patient survives through the spastic phase, it is usualy the paralysis that gets him at the end. The very few survivors are vegetative.
The brain pretty much self-destructs because of the inflamation. So in this case, they induced the coma and avoided the immunization to limit the inflamatory process.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer for providing strength in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery.
The girl got bitten in church! Do they also "credit the power of prayer" that she got infected with rabies and nearly died?
Shes a witch, burn her.
So while we're at it -- how does that play in to the induced coma as part of the treatment? IANAMD, but I'm speculating that less neural activity (either in the brain or up/down the spinal cord for movement) means fewer neural firings, and consequently slower neural transport, and therefore more time for the vaccine to work?
Its news for medical/scientific nerds. I find it intereasting, because everyone else who goes untreated has died, so this is definantly some important, or at least semi interesting news.
At least to someone like me. Louis Pasteur created it first by removing the spinal cords of rabbits who had died of the disease and drying them for various lengths of time. Then he'd grind them up and innoculate the victims in stages: first innoculation, from spinal cord dried for 14 days. Next one, 13 days. The victim got fresher and fresher cord powder to trigger an immune response.
I remember reading about that in the kid-version of his biography when I was 9 years old and thinking, "Golly, he was smart."
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
She is not the first to survive it, others have survived it as well (two that I know of, one was in India I beleive). In both cases however they'd have been better off dead due to tremendous brain damage. The big problem with rabies is the swelling of the brain.
Whether or not God exists is irrelivant.
My mother had serious medical problems last year that would have killed 999 out of a thousand people.
She told everyone that would listen that God had given her the gift of a new life and she never ever ever blamed God for putting her in a position that would require a miracle for her to survive.
Everytime a doctor gave her a timeline on recovery my mother marked her calender, in ink, because she new God would heal her.
At every step of the way she had a positive attitude and her doctors agree that is what the difference.
Prayer doesn't work better then medical science however, but with a serious illness many times nothing more can be done medically, it's up to fate. And a positive attitude (prayer helps with this) helps turn fate your way.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
The story on NPR tonight about the pediatrician who figured out how to save her is really an amazing work of doctoring.
You can listen to it here.
O=='=++
All Things Considered interviewed the doctor who apparently directed this girl's treatment (and devised a very creative approach to the problem).
A link to the RealAudio/Windows media file is here.
-Troy
She appears to be doing better now. But soon, she'll be trying to suck your brains from out of your still screaming body. Either that, or a monstrosity will burst out from her ribcage and start stalking the medical staff...
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Behold.. the power of... CHEESE!
(the article says it's because of the power of prayer that she appears to be recovering.. but.. it's because she's in Wisconsin. And there's so much CHEESE!)
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
To survive without getting the vaccine. It appears that all the other survivors took the vaccine, developed symptoms, but still survived. She survived and didn't take the vaccine at all. That's the crucial difference.
eh, my grandmother was told in 1981, just after my mother died, that her stomach and ovarian cancer would kill her "within about 6-8 months". Her doctor went into the Peace Corp, and died of apparently absolutely nothing while working in a field, about 6 months after telling her that.
My grandmother passed away 4 weeks after I graduated from High School, in 1994.
She always attributed it to that when my mother told her that she "didn't think she was coming back" the last time mother went to the hospital, mother had made grandmother promise "to make sure that my kids make it through school". And she did. Didn't make it two days past actually getting my diploma in the mail, though.
Hope and determination work in mysterious ways. People call that God. I call it "hope and determination".
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
They were probably too busy praying.
the induced coma as part of the treatment
Infecting and disruptings neurons causes spasms and seisures. Naturally flopping around like a tipped-over windup toy tends to exacerbate the inflamation.
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Smart? Sounds stupidly brave ;) I wouldn't touch a dozen rabbits that had rabbies, pull out the spinal cord, and muck about with it.
IANAMD either, but I can think of a few reasons they might have induced the coma. You could be right, it could have slowed the transfer of the virus and given the retrovirals (not vaccine) time to work. Another poster guessed it might be a form of immobility to help prevent her from injuring herself through involuntary muscle spasms. I'm guessing they used it to help keep the brain from swelling due to the virus. Could have been a combination of all three.
John
Lets look at this without trying real hard to be special.
"Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer for providing strength in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery."
once again
"Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer
for providing strength
in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery."
for providing strength.
Doesnt say it cured her.
Could easily mean it proveded strength to THEM, as a family. Because, as you might know, prayer is a very emotional thing, something that can fill one with hope. I doubt they are unaware or unnapreciative of the medical treatment, and certainly seemed to indulge the medical communities likley expensive and thankfully succesful attempt.
for providing strength.
If you're going to vociferously beat a dead horse, you could at least make sure it's a horse...
she's a vampire now...
watch her closely...
--
The treatment was a classic hack - everyone KNEW that rabies was 99.999999999999% fatal, and that the handful of survivors had brain damage. This doc didn't just tell the family "sorry, there's nothing we can do but make her comfortable and hope she pulls through, and get ready to cope with the brain damage when she does." He did some quick research, came up with a theory for how he might treat her, and tried it - and it worked. This is the hacker ethic *saving lives*. I can't think of any story that belongs on /. more than this one. If I ever meet this doc, the first drink's on me.
Ok, more than twice as many nines as is strictly accurate . . .
The largest number of animals that are infected are raccoons on the East Coast: Raccoons: 2778 Skunks: 2223 Bats: 1240 Foxes: 453 Cats: 249 Dogs: 114 Cattle: 83 Coyotes: 8 CDC Statistics Human cases 1990-2002: Bats: 27 Dogs: 9 CDC Statistics
Thanks, I thought that was an important point missing in the article.
Couldn't agree more. Science is hacking nature, in a good way. And the scientific process was open source long before computers were invented. Kudos for this guy who went against what 'everybody knew' and saved the girl. This is science with concience
Good find, very informative.
:-)
The bit about publishing though is BS, I used to work in the medical field. That's just his ego coming out cause he wants to get famous for what he did.
Of course personally I think he deserves to...
Why do people think that's very weird? We drink our mother's breast milk. calves drink their mother's breast milk, and so on.
I suspect the first person to do it couldn't produce milk, and wondered if cow's milk would be okay for the child. It doesn't seem that much of a jump.
In My opinion, the most interesting thing about rabies is that it virtually doesn't exist in Australia. That is, our animal quarantine laws and methods mean that there are no infected animals to give the disease to people. I love my country for that and other reasons.
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