Just saw a video about rabies having 100% kill rate, peaked my interest.
Why is rabies such a horrible thing and what does it actually do to be able to kill you without an actual cure etc?
EDIT: I didn’t expect so many responses to this, thank you to everyone who answered!
In: 1482
There‘s a couple factors that make rabies a really scary disease.
TL:DR Rabies doesnt causes symptoms while incubating and does not show up on common tests. The incubation phase is the only phase where it can be treated (quite easily actually). Once it starts to show symptoms there is no known cure and you will die.
A more in-depth look at what it‘s doi g:
– after infection rabies travels through your nervous system for 20-90 days and does not cause any symptoms. (There have been extreme cases of rabies incubating in 6 days all the way upto 5 years). Most pathogens travel through blood, so they show up on blood screens. Since rabies doesn‘t it also won‘t show up common blood tests. Simply put you don‘t know you‘re infected and you probably won‘t find out.
– while traveling through your nerves it causes damage as it goes. The time where it causes damage but hasn‘t reached the brain is called the prodromal phase
– A little biology excourse: your brain has the brain-blood-barrier, a set of ‚gates‘ that closely regulate what can go through the veins into the brain. Normally during an infection this barrier closes and prevents the infection from going to the brain.
– another little excourse: a neruon consists out of the main body that can do a bit of logic calculation and the typical stuff any cell can do. Additionally it has an axon, a long thin tube that reaches all the way to another neuron and allows communication.
– Rabies travels through the nervous system untill it reaches your brain. Once there it enters the neurons that make up your brain and can travel incredibly quickly through the axons. Inside a neuron rabies dies whag any virus does: it tricks the cell into making more of the virus instead of making it‘s own proteins. This uses up it‘s resources and blocks production of vital proteins, ultimately killing the cell.
– now onto the really scary part: remember that brain blood barrier? See it doesn‘t just prevent an infection from getring in when it closes but also your own immune system. Once rabies is ravaging in your brain your body recognizes there‘s an infection and it closes this barrier, to avoid havingthe infection soread tl the brain. However since rabies doesn‘t go through nlod the only thing the barrier is blocking is your immune system and medications.
– the damage it does to your braincells usually causes one of two paths of symptoms: furious and paralytic rabies. The names are pretty straight forward: furious rabies is the aggression and foaming yoj commonly associate with rabies while paralytic rabies causes you to be unable to control your own body.
– to be clear, once rabies has reached the prodromal phase there is no know cure. Nothing can stop it now and you‘re as good as guaranteed to die a painful death.
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