Potential rabies treatment fails two children

An experimental rabies treatment that saved the life of a teenager in 2004 has failed to help two other children infected with the deadly virus, U.S. experts said on Friday.

A 10-year-old Indiana girl and an 11-year-old boy in California both died despite getting the treatment that involves putting patients into a drug-induced coma and giving them antiviral drugs.

This means it is critical for parents and doctors to recognize quickly if a child may have been exposed to rabies and get treatment as quickly as possible, the team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Quick vaccination after exposure -- usually via a bite or some other contact with the saliva of an infected animal -- can save lives. But if a person begins showing symptoms, which are vague enough to be confusing, it is usually too late.

Rabies kills 55,000 people a year globally and affected 24 people in the United States in the years 2000 to 2006.

In 2004 a 15-year-old Wisconsin girl was successfully treated for rabies infection a month after she was bitten by a bat. It took doctors six days to figure out why she was ill but they quickly used drugs to put her into a coma, used a ventilator to keep her breathing and gave her the antiviral drug ribavirin.

She survived -- the first time anyone with documented rabies illness has lived without a rabies vaccination.

But the so-called Wisconsin protocol failed on the two U.S. children who became ill in September and November of last year, the CDC team said.

"To consider use of the Wisconsin rabies treatment protocol, the disease must be diagnosed as early in the course as possible, which requires enhanced clinical awareness of the disease among health-care providers," the CDC said in its report.

The 10-year-old Indiana girl's symptoms started with pain in her arm. It was days before her mother remembered that the girl had reported having been bitten by a bat that flew into her window the previous June.

The child died after 26 days in the hospital.

In the second fatal case, the 11-year-old boy had apparently been bitten by a rabid dog in the Philippines, perhaps two years before.

"Typical rabies incubation periods vary from 1 to 3 months after exposure," the CDC said. But longer time lags have been documented.