Jefferson Researchers' Work on Rabies Clearance from the Central Nervous System Highlighted in New Scientist
If someone is bitten by a rabid animal, a series of vaccines are given within a few days to survive the rabies virus.
However, six children are reported to be the only ones able to survive rabies without receiving a vaccine after being infected. Instead, they were given an experimental procedure called the Milwaukee protocol that "plunges the patient into a drug-induced coma, taking the brain 'offline' while the immune system scours the virus from infected neurons," writes the author of a New Scientist article.
Experts believe that the children survived without vaccines because they were infected with weak strains of the rabies virus.
D. Craig Hooper, PhD, and Bernhard Dietzschold, DVM, of Thomas Jefferson University have been conducting research on this matter. In fact, they have pioneered research on "how the blood-brain barrier permits immune cells to attack the rabies virus in the brains of mice," according to the article.
Read the rest of "Rabies may not be the invincible killer we thought" on newscientist.com.
Publication: New Scientist
Published: 6/21/2011