Do squirrels have rabies?

Once an animal is bitten or scratched, it is necessary to go to the hospital to disinfect the wound and get a rabies vaccine. Once the disease occurs, it is very likely to be fatal, so the vaccine is needed. For at least one month after the vaccine, it is necessary to ensure that some spicy and greasy foods that are easy to cause inflammation are not eaten, because rabies may be carried by some external factors, and squirrels may be involved, but prevention is necessary.

If a person is bitten or scratched by an animal such as a dog or cat, the person needs to go to the hospital to disinfect the wound and get a rabies vaccine, because once the disease breaks out it can be life-threatening, so the vaccine is necessary. One month after receiving the rabies vaccine, you should be careful not to eat irritating, spicy, or fishy foods. At the same time, avoid catching cold and overexerting.

Rabies is an acute infectious disease of the central nervous system caused by the rabies virus and is transmitted between humans and animals. Because rabies patients have a prominent clinical manifestation of fear of drinking water, the disease was once called "hydrophobia", but sick animals do not have this characteristic.

The main clinical manifestations are unique mania, fear, anxiety, fear of wind and water, drooling and pharyngeal muscle spasm, which may eventually lead to paralysis and endanger life. In 566 BC, my country.

In Zuo Zhuan, it is written that "the people of the country chased the trembling dog." Ge Hong of the Jin Dynasty. This disease is recorded in "Zuohou Fang" and Sun Simiao's "Qianjin Fang". In 1885, French scientist Pasteur successfully applied the attenuated rabies vaccine prepared from rabbit brain and spinal cord to human treatment for the first time. This was the first time in human history that rabies was conquered, and it set a precedent for vaccine prevention of rabies.

Symptoms and signs

The varying length of the incubation period is one of the characteristics of this disease. Most cases occur within 3 months, 4% to 10% occur more than half a year, and about 1% occur more than 1 year. The longest case recorded in the literature was 10 years. Factors that affect the length of the incubation period include age (shorter in children), wound location (head and face are more susceptible to the disease earlier), wound depth (deeper wounds are more susceptible to the disease earlier), the number of viral invasions and the virulence of the strain, whether formal wound expansion treatment and rabies vaccination were performed after the injury, etc. Other factors such as trauma, cold, and excessive fatigue may also lead to premature onset of the disease.

Clinical manifestations can be divided into two types: manic type (encephalitis type) and paralytic type (quiet type), which are divided into the following three stages:

1. Prodromal phase The prodromal phase of both types is similar. Before the excited state appears, most patients have low fever, drowsiness, lack of appetite, and a few have nausea, vomiting, headache (mostly in the occipital region), back pain, general discomfort, etc.; they begin to be sensitive to stimuli such as pain, sound, light, and wind, and have a tightening feeling in the throat. Early symptoms with great diagnostic significance are numbness, itching, tingling, or abnormal sensations such as crawling insects and ants in the healed wound site and nerve pathways, which occur in about 80% of cases. This is caused by viral reproduction stimulating neurons, especially sensory neurons, and the symptoms can last from hours to days. This phase lasts 1 to 2 days and rarely exceeds 4 days.

2. Excitement phase or spasm phase can be divided into two types, and the manifestations of the two types are different.

(1) Manic rabies: the most common type in China, accounting for about 2/3 abroad. The patient gradually enters a state of high excitement, with prominent manifestations of extreme terror and a sense of foreboding of impending disaster. He is also very sensitive to stimuli such as the sound of water, light, and wind, causing paroxysmal pharyngeal muscle spasms, difficulty breathing, etc.

Hydrophobia is a specific symptom of this disease, but it may not occur in every case and does not necessarily appear in the early stages. Typically, drinking water, seeing water, hearing the sound of running water, or just mentioning drinking water can cause severe spasm of the pharyngeal muscles. Therefore, the patient is extremely thirsty but dares not drink, and even if he wants to drink, he cannot swallow it. His mouth is full of drool, which stains the bed or spit everywhere. Due to vocal cord spasm, the patient may have unclear pronunciation, hoarse voice, or even loss of voice.