Rabies

Scientific Basis of the Disease and Its Management

Anthony R. Fooks, Alan C. Jackson, Anthony R. Fooks, Alan C. Jackson

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780128205723
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Infektiologie

Rabies: Basis of the Disease and Its Management, Fourth Edition is an authoritative reference on the current status of rabies, including the virological, clinical, and public health aspects and management recommendations. Rabies remains one of the most important global public health problems worldwide. Although many important developments have been made over the past century to combat this disease, rabies has become a re-emergent infection in the resource-constrained countries. The Fourth Edition updates this classic reference with comprehensive coverage of the molecular virology, pathogenesis, immunology, vaccines, public health aspects, and epidemiology of rabies and is completely revised, with new chapters that will cover historical developments in rabies intervention strategies, the evolution of rabies virus, modeling rabies control, and on the strategy for rabies elimination. Rabies, Fourth Edition, provides physicians, veterinarians, public health advisors, epidemiologists, and research scientists with a single source for authoritative and up-to-date information on the diagnosis, treatment, control, and prevention of this fatal infectious virus.

• Edited by renowned researchers in this subject and has gathered a team of experts to detail the science, treatment, and control of rabies
• Completely revised, the Fourth Edition presents rabies as a re-emergent infection with emphasis on a global perspective of the disease
• Includes new chapters the evolution of the rabies virus and on modeling rabies control and includes many full-color figures that highlight important information

Chapter 1

A history of rabies—The foundation for global canine rabies elimination

Charles E. Rupprecht^a; Conrad M. Freuling^b; Reeta S. Mani^c; Carlos Palacios^d; Claude T. Sabeta^e; Michael Ward^{f a} LYSSA LLC, Cumming, GA, United States
^b Institute of Molecular Virology and Cell Biology, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany
^c Department of Neurovirology, National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences, Bangalore, India
^d Pablo Cassara Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina
^e Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute, Pretoria, South Africa
^f The University of Sydney, Camden, Australia

Abstract

Lyssaviruses are ancient, but underappreciated, stymied in part by superstitions and ignorance, fragments of records over thousands of years, technical limitations, academic conservatism, and classical biopolitical thought. Once believed as a single entity, rabies is caused by > 17 lyssavirus species. Wildlife, particularly bats, perpetuate lyssaviruses, as agents of a disease of nature. Eurasia was the likely focus for the original spread of canine rabies. Canine domestication, adaptation of wildlife rabies virus to dogs, subsequent host shifts back to wild carnivores, and global translocation of rabid dogs during 15th century colonization provided the underpinnings to the current burden and distribution of rabies at a landscape scale. Inferred relationships of rabies to animal bites, the characteristic neurological signs and inevitability of death had a major influence on scientific thought and applications toward a crucial understanding of viral pathogenesis, diagnosis, epidemiology, prevention, and control throughout the 19th–20th centuries. Today, a renewed focus on a “Zero by 30” plan has the potential for the greatest impact upon the global elimination of human rabies via dogs in modern history. Owing to progress obtained over the past century, all tools are available for demonstration of this goal over the next decade in an applied One Health capacity. To this end, history informs the present, representative of threats born of complacency and globalization, as well as actualization of promises that international collaboration and technology offer in response to one of the oldest neglected tropical diseases.

Keywords

Africa; Asia; Australia; Caribbean; Colonization; Eurasia; Europe; History; North America; South America

1.1 Introduction

Rabies, an acute, progressive encephalitis caused by a lyssavirus, is ancient, with countless historical events occurring “before the common era” (BCE). Most treatises on the topic begin with a notation of rabies as one of the oldest infectious diseases.

The objective of this chapter is a spatiotemporal summary of seemingly important occurrences on rabies and, in context, an attempt at reanalysis of critical past events related to a more current understanding of the disease, as a backdrop to individual themes within this current edition, as well as a subtext for the programmatic global elimination of human rabies via dogs (GEHRD), as envisioned by international organizations (Abela-Ridder, de Balogh, Kessels, Dieuzy-Labaye, & Torres, 2018). Reinterpretations about rabies origins are based in part upon collective logic, inference, evidence, and parsimony (Rupprecht, Kuzmin, & Meslin, 2017). Many prehistoric events had obvious consequences for rabies (and other neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)), as interpreted today. Physicochemical actions, geological mechanisms, organic evolution, ecological dynamics and biological processes, at a molecular basis to a community level, have all shaped collectively what we call “rabies”—a tale of viruses and mammals; domestication and migrations; dogs and people. With the advent of recorded history, superstitions and parroted expert opinions alone gave way to the seeds of distinctive observations of nature, which budded during the Renaissance and flowered throughout the 18th–19th centuries, from philosophy to eventual acceptance. Details on pre-20th century luminaries, facts and figures may be found in earlier editions of this book.

Clearly, canine rabies was recognized and controlled before the 20th century. With an improved 21st century understanding, sensitive and specific diagnostics and highly safe and efficacious biologics, human rabies is preventable and canine rabies can be eliminated, in an even more effective, economical, and ethical manner, at a broad scale (Cleaveland et al., 2018).

1.2 Asia

1.2.1 A seat of canine domestication?

Rabies appears in Asian accounts nearly as long as there are records (Table 1.1). Based on such accounts and molecular evidence, the seeds of canine rabies may have originated in Asia (Bourhy et al., 2008; Meng et al., 2011; Nadin-Davis, Turner, Paul, Madhusudana, & Wandeler, 2007). Dogs were the first human companion species and the only large carnivore ever domesticated. When, where, and how domestication occurred remain controversial (Botigué et al., 2017; Frantz et al., 2016; Ollivier et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2016). Evidence of dog-like canids in the fossil records from Siberia date to ~ 30,000 years ago (Ovodov et al., 2011). Early dog domestications in the Near East are estimated to ~ 15,000 BCE (Dayan, 1994). The temple of Gobekli-Tepe in south-east Turkey, dated to ~ 12,000 BCE, depicted dogs in stone carvings. The Natufian Grave (~ 12,000 BCE), in Ain Mallaha, Israel, contains an elderly man buried with a puppy (Bevan, 2018; Davis & Valla, 1978; Mark, 2019). Collared dog figurines appear at Harappa and other Indus civilization sites (~ 3300–1300 BCE). In the mature Harappan phase...