why rabies is so deadly, why it has such a high kill rate and how/what does it actually do?

Question

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

Answer 1

We currently don’t have a way to really treat viral infections, best you can do is treat the symptoms and hope your immune system clears it. Rabies infection doesn’t really show symptoms before the virus has made it into the brain and as others have pointed out, it traveles to the brain via nerve cells and not through blood which makes it harder for your immune system to catch it if you are not vaccinated.

Once your brain is infected, your immune system will try to clear it out but the damage has already been done. Your immune system will do it’s best, but it’s causing more damage in the process. What makes it harder for your immune system is that not all immune cells can access the brain even during a neuroimmune response. Other infections of the brain have high mortality rates as well such as bacterial meningitis and naegleria fowleri. It’s hard to get medication to reach the brain because of the blood brain barrier, and your immune system response will usually cause more swelling and more damage in the brain.

There have been a few cases of people surviving rabies through a series of treatments called the milwaukee protocol. Iirc the patient is put into medical coma, the body temperature is controlled to try to decrease the swelling of the brain and antiviral medication is administered together with antibiotics and antifungal medicine to treat any secondary infections. The deep coma will usually be fatal or cause long lasting damage anyways. Most of the few survivors died to complications in a few years with the only exception being, as far as I know, Jeanna Giese.

I’d point out that deaths from rabies are very rare in the western world as the vaccine is extremely effective even after being bitten as the incubation period of rabies is very long. In the western world, most cases are caused by bat bites as some people might not take a small bat bite very seriously. If you ever wake up with a bat in your room, get vaccinated just in case.