Is rabies hereditary?

Rabies refers to a disease that is emitted by stray pet dogs or cats after being bitten. Rabies is most likely to occur if bitten by a pet of a rabid patient. Rabies is not hereditary, but it can be contagious. It is transmitted from blood to blood, so rabies requires careful diagnosis and treatment.

Disease diagnosis

In some cases, due to unclear bite history, they are often misdiagnosed as neurosis in the early stages. Patients with atypical symptoms after onset are sometimes easily misdiagnosed as mental illness, tetanus, viral meningitis and cerebral leptospirosis. Cases of quiet limb paralysis may be misdiagnosed as poliomyelitis or Guillain-Barré syndrome. The incubation period of tetanus patients is relatively short, usually 6 to 14 days. Common symptoms are clenched jaws, a wry smile, and prolonged systemic muscle spasms, often accompanied by opisthotonos. The muscle spasms in rabies occur intermittently, mainly in the pharyngeal muscles. Tetanus patients are not highly excited or hydrophobic, and can usually be cured with active treatment.

Severe changes in consciousness (coma, etc.), meningeal irritation, cerebrospinal fluid changes and clinical outcomes help to differentiate this disease from neurological diseases such as viral meningitis. Immunological antigen, antibody testing and virus isolation can make a definitive diagnosis.

Rabies should be differentiated from rabies-like hysteria (pseudorabies). This type of patient has a history of being bitten by a dog (mostly confirmed to be a rabid dog) or a history of contact with sick animals. After a few hours or days, they develop rabies-like symptoms, such as a tightness in the throat, the ability to drink water, and mental excitement, but they do not have a fever, drooling, or fear of the wind. If given water, it will not cause throat muscle spasm. This type of patients can recover quickly through suggestion, persuasion and symptomatic treatment.

In addition, complications involving the central nervous system may occur after Semple vaccination and should be differentiated from rabies. The incubation period for patients with only myelitis is 1 to 3 weeks after the injection, starting from the first injection, with the shortest being 6 days and the longest being 52 days. The clinical manifestations are sudden fever during vaccination accompanied by ascending paralysis or incomplete transverse spinal cord lesions, paraplegia and sphincter incontinence. If concurrent with diffuse meningitis, the onset will be later, with an incubation period of 5 to 8 weeks. The clinical symptoms include headache, fever, impaired consciousness and manifestations of myelitis due to viral infection. Both of the above complications are easily confused with paralytic rabies.

The presence of neutralizing antibodies in cerebrospinal fluid is helpful for the diagnosis of rabies. Dynamic observation during the course of the disease and the judgment of the efficacy of adrenal cortical hormones are helpful for clinical differentiation. Fatal cases must be diagnosed through animal vaccination based on the presence or absence of Naessoni bodies and viral antigens.