Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Rabies |
RabiesNoun1. An acute viral disease of the nervous system of warm-blooded animals (usually transmitted by the bite of a rabid animal); rabies is fatal if the virus reaches the brain. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "rabies" was first used: 1598. (references) |
Etymology: Rabies \Ra"bi*es\, noun. [Latin expression See Rage, noun.]. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Food & Agriculture | A highly fatal viral infection of the nervous system which affects all warm-blooded animal species. It is one of the most important of the zoonoses because of the inevitably fatal outcome for the infected human. The causative rhabdovirus is transmitted in the saliva and the principal method of infection in animals is by a bite. The syndrome includes an ascending paralysis which may be preceded by a period of mania and aggression. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Rabies is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis in animals and people. It can affect most species of warm-blooded animal, but is rare among non-carnivores. The stereotypical image of an infected ("rabid") animal is a "mad dog" foaming at the mouth, but cats, ferrets, raccoons, chipmunks, skunks, foxes and bats also become rabid. Squirrels, other rodents and rabbits are very seldom infected. Rabies may also present in a so-called 'paralytic' form, rendering the infected animal unnaturally quiet and withdrawn.In humans, untreated rabies is almost invariably fatal. Between 40,000 and 70,000 die annually from rabies, most in Africa and Asia where rabies is endemic. About 10 million people receive treatment annually after suspected exposure to rabies. [1]
Rabies is caused by a 'Lyssavirus'. This group of viruses includes the Rabies virus traditionally associated with the disease, Australian bat lyssavirus, Duvenhage virus, two European bat lyssaviruses, Lagos bat virus and Mokola virus. Viruses typically have either helical or cubic symmetry. Lyssaviruses have helical symmetry, so their infectious particles are approximately cylindrical in shape. This is typical of plant-infecting viruses. Human-infecting viruses more commonly have cubic symmetry and take shapes approximating regular polyhedra.
Transmission and symptoms
The virus is usually present in the saliva of a symptomatic rabid animal; the route of infection is nearly always via a bite. By causing the infected animal to be exceptionally aggressive, the virus ensures its transmission to the next host. In vitro transmission has occurred via an aerosol through mucous membranes; transmission in this form this may have happened in people exploring caves populated by rabid bats. Transmission from person to person has not been observed, except during corneal transplant surgery.
After a typical human infection by animal bite, the virus directly or indirectly enters the peripheral nervous system. It then travels along the nerves towards the central nervous system. During this phase, the virus cannot be easily detected within the host, and vaccination may still confer cell-mediated immunity to pre-empt symptomatic rabies. Once the virus reaches the brain, it rapidly causes an encephalitis and symptoms appear. It may also inflame the spinal cord producing myelitis.
The period between infection and the first flu-like symptoms can be as long as two years, but it is normally 3-12 weeks. Soon after, the symptoms expand to cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, confusion, agitation, progressing to delirium, abnormal behaviour, hallucinations, and insomnia. The production of large quantities of saliva and tears coupled with an inability to speak or swallow are typical during the later stages of the disease; this is known as "hydrophobia". Death almost invariably results 2-10 days after the first symptoms; the handful of people who are known to have survived the disease were all left with severe brain damage.
Prevention
There is no known cure for rabies, but it can be prevented by vaccination. Rabies originally doomed almost everyone who got it to die, until Louis Pasteur developed the first rabies vaccination in 1886 and used it to save the life of Joey Meister, who had been bitten by a mad dog. Current vaccines are relatively painless and are given in your arm, like a flu or tetanus vaccine.
Treatment after exposure (known as postexposure prophylaxis or "PEP") is highly successful in preventing the disease if administered promptly. In the United States, the treatment consists of a regimen of one dose of immunoglobulin and five doses of rabies vaccine over a 28-day period. Rabies immunoglobulin and the first dose of rabies vaccine should be given as soon as possible after exposure, with additional doses on days 3, 7, 14, and 28 after the first.
In case of animal bite it is also helpful to remove, by thorough washing, as much infective material as soon as possible.
Prevalence
Dog licensing, destruction of stray dogs, muzzling and other measures contributed to the eradication of rabies from Great Britain in the early 20th century. More recently, large-scale vaccination of cats, dogs and ferrets has been successful in combatting rabies in some developed countries.
Rabies virus survives in widespread, varied, rural wildlife reservoirs. Mandatory vaccination of animals is less effective in rural areas. Especially in developing countries, animals may not be privately owned and their destruction may be unacceptable. Oral vaccines can be safely distributed in baits, and this has successfully impacted rabies in rural areas of France, Ontario, Texas, Florida and elsewhere. Vaccination campaigns may be expensive, and a cost-benefit analysis can lead those responsible to opt for policies of containment rather than elimination of the disease.
Rabies is endemic to many parts of the world, and one of the reasons given for quarantine periods in international animal transport has been to try to keep it out of uninfected regions. However, developed countries, pioneered by Sweden, now allow unencumbered travel between their territories for pet animals that have demonstrated an adequate immune response to rabies vaccination.
Since the development of effective human vaccines and immunoglobulin treatments the US death rate from rabies has dropped from 100 or more per year early in the 20th century, to 1-2 per year, mostly caused by bat bites.
Australia is one of the few parts of the world where rabies has never been introduced. However, the Australian Bat Lyssavirus occurs naturally in both insectivorous and fruit eating bats (flying foxes) from most mainland states. Scientists believe it is present in bat populations throughout the range of flying foxes in Australia.
Great Britain, which has stringent regulations on the importation of animals, had also been believed to be entirely free from rabies until 1996 when a single Daubenton's bat was found to be infected with a rabies-like virus usually found only in bats - European Bat Lyssavirus 2 (EBL2). There were no more known cases until September 2002 when another Daubenton's bat tested positive for EBL2 in Lancashire. A bat conservationist who was bitten by the infected bat received post exposure treatment and did not develop rabies.
Then in November 2002 David McRae, a bat conservationist from Guthrie, Angus who was believed to have been bitten by a bat, became the first person to contract rabies in Great Britain since 1902. He died from the disease on November 24 2002.
External link
- http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/rabies/
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Rabies."
Synonyms: RabiesSynonyms: hydrophobia (n), lyssa (n), madness (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Insanity | Insanity, lunacy; madness; Adjective: mania, rabies, furor, mental alienation, aberration; paranoia, schizophrenia; dementation, dementia, demency; phrenitis, phrensy, frenzy, raving, incoherence, wandering, delirium, calenture of the brain; delusion, hallucination; lycanthropy; brain storm. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Rabies |
| English words defined with "rabies": hydrophobia ♦ lyssa ♦ madness ♦ rhabdovirus. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "rabies": CHIEF WARDEN, COMMUNITY-SERVICES-AND-HEALTH-EDUCATION OFFICER ♦ Hydrophobia, HYLOCEREUS UNDATUS ♦ Lyssavirus ♦ Midsummer Madness ♦ Rabies Vaccines, Rabies Virus, Rhabdoviridae Infections ♦ Zoonotic diseases. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Rabies" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Latin (frenzy, fury, madness, rabies, rage), Swedish (hydrophobia, rabies). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | I have rabies, but there's so little I can do. (Dr. Dolittle 2; writing credit: Larry Levin) It's like rabies, only faster, a lot faster (The Return of the Living Dead; writing credit: Dan O'Bannon; Rudy Ricci) | |
Clever | New Vaccine May Contain Rabies (references; author: unknown) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Rabies in Your Community (1958) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
References | |
Books | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Exterior of South West Rabies Investigations Station in Las Crucis, New Mexico. Credit: CDC. |  | Rabies in humans is almost always fatal. Symptoms may be headache, fatigue, fever and pain at the site of the bite can be present. Behavioral changes like apprehension, anxiety, agitation, irritability, insomnia and depression may also appear. Credit: CDC. |
 | In the year 2000, the U.S. reported 7369 cases of rabies in animals, of which 6.1% of these cases were foxes. During the same year no human cases were reported to the CDC. Credit: CDC. |  | Most of the recent human rabies cases in the United States have been caused by rabies virus that was transmitted through a bat vector. Credit: CDC. |
 | Domesticated animals afflicted with dumb rabies may become increasingly depressed, and try to hide in isolated places, while wild animals seem to lose their fear of human beings, often appearing unusually friendly. Credit: CDC. |  | Rabies virus belongs to the order Mononegavirales. Raccoons continue to be the most frequently reported rabid wildlife species, and involved 37.7% of all animal-transmitted cases during the year 2000. Credit: CDC. |
 | Wild animals accounted for 93% of reported animal cases of rabies in the year 2000, with foxes comprising 6.1% of this figure. Credit: CDC. |  | Animals with "dumb" rabies appear depressed, lethargic, and uncoordinated. Gradually they become completely paralyzed. When their throat and jaw muscles are paralyzed, the animals will drool and have difficulty swallowing. Credit: CDC. |
 | Puerto Rico reported 75 rabies cases during 1999, including 59 mongooses, 11 dogs, one cat, as well as 80 cases during 2000 that included 59 mongooses, 15 dogs and one cat. Credit: CDC. |  | The vast majority of rabies cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) each year occur in wild animals like raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes. Credit: CDC. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | C. Budding rabies virus. (references) | |
Any mammal can get rabies. (references) | ||
One type is "furious" rabies. (references) | ||
Trade | Kenya | Cats and dogs are issued with an import license only after a veterinary surgeon has certified the animal to have been vaccinated against rabies and has no symptoms of any contagious disease. (references) |
Travel | Ecuador | There have been cases of rabies in Guayaquil and Quito. (references) |
Bolivia | Hepatitis and rabies are common in Bolivia, although with proper vaccinations both can usually be avoided. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Rabies" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Rabies" is used about 82 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 82 | 36,594 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "rabies": be attacked by rabies ♦ Rabies Vaccines ♦ Rabies Virus. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "rabies": rabies-infected. | |
Ending with "rabies": anti-rabies, Kohl-rabies, vaccinia-rabies. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "rabies"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | tërbim (exasperation, experience, furor, fury, hydrophobia, ire, lyssa, madness, rage, ragging, rampage, rampancy, rave, wrath), frikë uji, egërsi (atrocity, bestiality, callousness, cruelty, ferocity, fierceness, furiosity, fury, ill-treatment, inclemency, rabidity, savagery, truculence, virulence). (various references) | |
Arabic | داء الكلب (hydrophobia). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | хидрофобия (hydrophobia), бяс (fury, hydrophobia, ire, madness, rabidity, rage, rave). (various references) | |
Chinese | 狂犬病, 恐水病 . (various references) | |
Czech | vzteklina. (various references) | |
Danish | rabies (hydrophobia, lyssa), hundegalskab (hydrophobia, lyssa). (various references) | |
Dutch | hondsdolheid (hydrophobia), dolheid. (various references) | |
Esperanto | rabio. (various references) | |
Faeroese | hundaøði. (various references) | |
Farsi | گزیدگی سگ هار, بیماری هاری . (various references) | |
Finnish | vesikauhu (hydrophobia), raivotauti (hydrophobia). (various references) | |
French | rage (rage, raging). (various references) | |
Frisian | dûmens (hydrophobia). (various references) | |
German | Tollwut (amuck, fierceness). (various references) | |
Greek | λύσσα (furiousness, fury, hydrophobia, rabidness, rage, ragging). (various references) | |
Hebrew | כלבת (hydrophobia, lyssa, lytta), בעת מים (hydrophobia), שכת. (various references) | |
Hungarian | veszettség (hydrophobia, rabidity). (various references) | |
Icelandic | hundaæði. (various references) | |
Indonesian | penyakit anjing gila. (various references) | |
Irish | confadh. (various references) | |
Italian | rabbia (anger, fury, rage, wrath), idrofobia (hydrophobia). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 狂犬病 (hydrophobia). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | きょうけ"びょう (hydrophobia). (various references) | |
Korean | 광견병. (various references) | |
Manx | gorley ny moddee (distemper), chingys ny coyin. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | abiesray.(various references) | |
Portuguese | raiva (anger, dander, fury, ire, madness, odium, paddy, paddywhack, rabidity, rage), hidrofobia (hydrophobia, madness, rabidity). (various references) | |
Romanian | turbare (frenzy, madness, rage). (various references) | |
Russian | водобоязнь (canine madness, hydrophobia, lyssa), бешенство (berserker fury, canine madness, frenzy, furiosity, fury, hydrophobia, lyssa, rabidity, rabidness). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | besnilo. (various references) | |
Spanish | rabia (ire, madness, rabidity, rage). (various references) | |
Swedish | rabies (hydrophobia). (various references) | |
Thai | โรคพิษสุนัขบ้า (hydrophobia). (various references) | |
Turkish | kuduz (hydrophobia, lyssa, lyssa-, mad, rabid). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | сказ (hydrophobia, madness, rabidity), водобоязнь (hydrophobia, rabidity). (various references) | |
Welsh | cynddaredd (madness). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | lyssa, rabies. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words ending with "rabies": antirabies, kohlrabies. (additional references) | |
| |
"Rabies" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: arabise, pambies, rabbins, rabbited, Rabesa, rabices, rabide, rabids, rabie, Rabiers, rabile, rabine, rabines, Rabins, Rabiou, rabis, rabish, rabits, Rabuau, raby, Rbxes, Rdbitest, rebase, ribaus, ribies, ribis, Robbies, robie, robies, rubieus. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "rabies" (pronounced rā"bēz) |
| 4 | -ā" b ē z | babies. |
| 3 | -b ē z | cabbies, cubbies, dobies, freebies, hobbies, lobbies, rubies, zombies. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: braise. | |
| Words within the letters "a-b-e-i-r-s" | |
-1 letter: abris, arise, bares, baser, bears, biers, birse, braes, bries, raise, ribes, saber, sabir, sabre, serai. | |
-2 letters: abri, airs, arbs, ares, arse, bare, bars, base, bear, bias, bier, bise, brae, bras, brie, bris, ears, eras, ires, isba, rase, rebs, reis, rias, ribs, rise, sabe, sari, sear, sera, sire. | |
-3 letters: abs, air, ais, arb, are. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-b-e-i-r-s" | |
+1 letter: abiders, ambries, ascribe, bailers, baiters, barites, bearish, braised, braises, braizes, brasier, brassie, braxies, caribes, darbies, isobare, rabbies, rebaits, seabird, sidebar, terbias. | |
+2 letters: abrasive, abridges, aerobics, airbuses, ambaries, amberies, arabizes, arbiters, ascribed, ascribes, bakeries, ballsier, banisher, banister, barflies, barkiest, barmiest, barniest, baronies, barriers, basifier, bawdries, bearings, bearskin, bedrails, bestiary, bilayers, binaries, biramose, birettas, bizarres, blastier, braiders, brailles, brakiest, brandies, brashier, brasiers, brassier, brassies, braziers, breccias, brigades, brisance, calibers, calibres, carbides, carbines, crabwise, daubries, exurbias, firebase, gambiers, isobares, liberals, librates, raisable, rarebits, redbaits, rinsable, sabering, scabbier, seabirds, searobin, shabbier, sidebars, sparerib, sybarite, tribades, urbanise, vibrates. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Quotations: Non-fiction 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Expressions 10. Expressions: Internet 11. Translations: Modern 12. Translations: Ancient | 13. Derivations 14. Rhymes 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
