4 ms·

A case of rabies is, 99% of the time, a case of death.

by xen0 5y ago

User23 5y ago
There’s only one known survivor ever[1] and it’s a hell of a way to die. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeanna-giese-rabies-survivor/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeanna-giese-rabi...
- dangerbird2 5y ago
  According to this study[1], there have been about 20 reported survivors worldwide. Because it's so rare in countries with the medical infrastructure to report these things, it's probably pretty hard to infer the actual survival rate. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/
  - cge 5y ago
    >Because it's so rare in countries with the medical infrastructure to report these things, it's probably pretty hard to infer the actual survival rate. I'm reasonably certain that rabies without intensive treatment (Milwaukee or Recife or similar, the topics of that study) has had no recorded survivors after exhibiting symptoms, ever, in all the thousands of years it has been known. Given how technically intensive the treatment is, anyone performing it likely has the infrastructure to report on the treatment as well, and so I expect that study likely does include most treatment attempts. With that said, cases slipping through pre-symptomatic discovery and treatment are so rare in countries with the infrastructure to even attempt post-symptomatic treatment that we likely don't have a good idea of what we could get the survival rate to be.
- cge 5y ago
  That article is from a few years after the first successful attempt at treatment. While enormously involved and expensive, with a low probability of success and a near certainty of moderate to severe neurological damage, it appears that the general treatment approach used for Giese has since resulted in further survivors, such that there have now been around a dozen survivors out of a few dozen post-symptomatic treatment attempts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/

A case of rabies is, 99% of the time, a case of death.

by xen0 5y ago

A case of rabies is, 99% of the time, a case of death.

There’s only one known survivor ever[1] and it’s a hell of a way to die. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeanna-giese-rabies-survivor/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeanna-giese-rabi...

dangerbird2 5y ago
According to this study[1], there have been about 20 reported survivors worldwide. Because it's so rare in countries with the medical infrastructure to report these things, it's probably pretty hard to infer the actual survival rate. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/
- cge 5y ago
  >Because it's so rare in countries with the medical infrastructure to report these things, it's probably pretty hard to infer the actual survival rate. I'm reasonably certain that rabies without intensive treatment (Milwaukee or Recife or similar, the topics of that study) has had no recorded survivors after exhibiting symptoms, ever, in all the thousands of years it has been known. Given how technically intensive the treatment is, anyone performing it likely has the infrastructure to report on the treatment as well, and so I expect that study likely does include most treatment attempts. With that said, cases slipping through pre-symptomatic discovery and treatment are so rare in countries with the infrastructure to even attempt post-symptomatic treatment that we likely don't have a good idea of what we could get the survival rate to be.
cge 5y ago
That article is from a few years after the first successful attempt at treatment. While enormously involved and expensive, with a low probability of success and a near certainty of moderate to severe neurological damage, it appears that the general treatment approach used for Giese has since resulted in further survivors, such that there have now been around a dozen survivors out of a few dozen post-symptomatic treatment attempts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/