Anger disease, hydrophobia, Greek: Lyssa, Latin: Rabies French: La RageTollwut is an infectious disease of the central nervous system. The pathogen is the rabies virus, which belongs to the rhabdovirus family, and is transmitted by a bite of infected animals such as dogs or foxes that secrete the virus in their saliva. The rabies virus is a virus that infects nerve cells and multiplies there (neurotrophic virus).
It belongs to the group of rhabdoviruses. Rhabdoviruses have an envelope of protein molecules, a single strand of a copy of DNA (RNA) and are usually rod-shaped. The virus is widely distributed among wild and domestic animals.
Affected animals are: Foxes, deer, dogs and cats. But also bats, ferrets, badgers, raccoons, skunks and wolves can be carriers. Transmission occurs via the infected saliva or urine of animals suffering from rabies, especially in the case of bite and scratch injuries, but also in the case of trustful licking in areas of small skin injuries.
The intact skin cannot be penetrated by the virus, but intact mucous membranes such as the oral mucosa can. The viruses can also be found in the milk of sick animals. Any animal that behaves untypically in an area at risk of rabies is considered to be suspected of rabies.
The main symptom of an infected animal is the lack of shyness towards people in the wild. Endangered are above all veterinarians, foresters, hunters, forest workers, butchers and laboratory personnel. The very different incubation period ranges from 10 days to several months.
It is the shorter, the closer the virus entry point to the central nervous system. Rabies is a very rare infectious disease. The incidence of the disease is about 1:100.
000. 000 worldwide. Between 1977 and 1992 there were four deaths due to rabies in Germany.
The last time rabies was diagnosed in 2007 in a man who was infected by a dog bite during a stay in Morocco. In India there are 50. 000 rabies deaths annually.
A transmission of Rabies virus occurred in the summer of 2004 during an organ transplantation in the USA. All organ recipients died as a result of the infection. In 2005, such an incident also occurred in Germany: the organ donor transmitted the virus to the recipients.
Three of them died of rabies, the other three survived. The donor had previously been in India. Rabies is one of the longest known infectious diseases.
It was already known around 2300 BC that the disease could be transmitted by a bite. In the ancient world Aristotle and Euripides, a Greek dramatist, dealt with the disease and also in Greek mythology, for example, Artemis, the goddess of hunting, was a donor or victim of rabies. Augustinus von Hippo, Roman philosopher of the Middle Ages, suspected that rabies originated with the devil.
Sirius (Greek: dog), which is the main star in the constellation of the Great Dog, got its name from the belief that it is a spreader of the disease. Therefore, in the middle of summer, when Sirius was particularly close to the sun, dogs suspected of being infected with rabies were tortured and killed. Rabies has long been accompanied by myths, superstition and human fantasies, especially because it inevitably led to death.
Also the origin of the belief in werewolves is closely related to the disease, since rabies was transmitted through the bite of wolves and a person infected in this way became “wolf-like”. Rabies was treated with the Hubertus key, which was consecrated to St. Hubert, the patron saint of hunting. This instrument was a key or a nail, which was made to glow over charcoal and then used to burn out the bite wound.
However, in 1828 the use of the Hubertus key was banned by the church. In 1885 the vaccine was developed by Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), a French physician and bacteriologist. For this purpose he inserted attenuated rabies viruses into the spinal cord of rabbits, the rabbits formed antibodies against the viruses and Pasteur produced the first rabies vaccine from the dried spinal cord.
The virus first multiplies at the point of entry in the muscle and connective tissue, and then travels along nerves to the spinal cord and brain. There it infects the nerve cells and multiplies again. This leads to an acute inflammation (encephalitis) and so-called negri-bodies develop, some of which consist of immature viruses.When a certain number of viruses have reached a certain number, they spread again along the nerves, which leads to paralysis of the body and ultimately to death.
Salivary and lacrimal glands can also be affected so that the virus can be excreted with their secretions. However, only 30 to 40% of those infected develop the disease, which then always ends fatally. In the aggressive form, the brain is mainly affected, while in the silent form the spinal cord is inflamed (myelitis).
