Complete Recovery From Clinical Rabies: Case Report

Abstract

A 17-year-old male had been bitten by his dog. He was given one dose of rabies vaccine after being bitten. Twenty days after vaccination, he developed complaints of itching and paresthesia at the bite area on his forearm. He was transferred to our department with the preliminary diagnosis of rabies due to his complaints of fever, abdominal pain, dysphagia and difficulty of breathing after 3-5 days. Rabies viral nucleic acid was positive by reverse transcriptase polymeraze chain reaction in the cerebrospinal fluid and saliva samples, and corneal smear was found positive with fluorescence antibody method. Patient's complaints markedly subsided after hospitalization and he was discharged on 66th day with complete recovery. In the literature, complete recovery in patients with clinical rabies is limited to a few cases. In this paper, we present the first case recovering from human clinical rabies, whose diagnosis was confirmed by direct diagnostic methods. © 2013 by Türkiye Klinikleri.