Rabies virus exists in dogs on Sri Lanka as a single, minimally divergent lineage only distantly related to other rabies virus lineages in Asia. Stable, geographically isolated virus populations are susceptible to local extinction. A fully implemented rabies-control campaign could make Sri Lanka the first Asian country in >30 years to become free of rabies virus.

Information is scarce about sylvatic rabies virus in Asia and about rabies in palm civets. We report a novel sylvatic rabies virus variant detected in a golden palm civet in Sri Lanka. Evolutionary analysis suggests the virus diverged from canine rabies viruses in Sri Lanka in ≈1933 (range 1886-1963).

Dog rabies is still epizootic in most countries of Africa, Asia and South America and in these countries dogs are responsible for most human deaths from the disease. The incubation period in dogs may vary from one week to several months and may be influenced by the site of infection and the virus dose and strain. Diagnosis by clinical signs alone is inadequate since many rabid dogs develop dumb...

To evaluate compliance with current World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for postexposure treatment (PET) of rabies, we interviewed all animal bite victims seeking treatment on the same day of each week from 28 December 1994 through 18 January 1995 at the Civil Hospital of Karachi (Pakistan), a major referral center. Of the 143 patients studied, 109 (76%) sustained bleeding transdermal bi...

Rabies is one of the most, if not the most, prominent and feared zoonotic diseases in the world and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 55,000 people die of the disease every year. Most of these deaths occur in Asia and Africa and are usually the result of dog-mediated rabies. In Europe, the red fox is considered the main reservoir species for wildlife rabies caused by the rabies...

Most human rabies deaths in the United States can be attributed to unrecognized exposures to rabies viruses associated with bats, particularly those associated with two infrequently encountered bat species (Lasionycteris noctivagans and Pipistrellus subflavus). These human rabies cases tend to cluster in the southeastern and northwestern United States. In these regions, most rabies deaths assoc...

Movement of dogs between rabies-endemic and rabies-free countries carries the inherent risk of introducing the disease. In April of 2008, a juvenile dog was imported to the UK from Sri Lanka. It died shortly after transfer to a quarantine facility in the south-east of England following a short history of diarrhoea and convulsions but no overt signs of aggression. Subsequent investigation confir...

BACKGROUND Rabies is an acute fatal viral disease generally transmitted from infected animals to humans through bites. It is distributed worldwide. The number of Korean people traveling to rabies-endemic countries and being bitten by infected animals has been increasing recently. Therefore, we investigated international travelers who received rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) at the Nation...

IMPORTANCE The rabies virus causes a fatal encephalitis and can be transmitted through tissue or organ transplantation. In February 2013, a kidney recipient with no reported exposures to potentially rabid animals died from rabies 18 months after transplantation. OBJECTIVES To investigate whether organ transplantation was the source of rabies virus exposure in the kidney recipient, and to eval...

Rabies is a reemerging disease in China. The high incidence of rabies leads to numerous concerns: a potential carrier-dog phenomenon, undocumented transmission of rabies virus from wildlife to dogs, counterfeit vaccines, vaccine mismatching, and seroconversion testing in patients after their completion of postexposure prophylaxis (PEP). These concerns are all scientifically arguable given a mod...