Taking the Bite Out of Rabies

Nearly a century has passed since Louis Pasteur developed the first effective vaccine against rabies, but the dangerous viral disease still takes hundreds of lives round the world every year. The problem is especially serious in developing countries, where inoculations are not always quickly available and infected animals, who transmit the disease through bites, often run rampant. Yet even when bitten people are vaccinated in time, the treatment can be almost as bad as the disease. Typically, it involves a series of 14 or more shots (usually in the abdomen) that often cause painful allergic swelling and occasionally paralysis or death.

Now a remarkable new vaccine, which World Health Organization officials describe as a "fantastic breakthrough" in the campaign against rabies, has passed another milestone test. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a team of U.S. and Iranian doctors last week reported that they recently administered the vaccine in a series of only six shots to 45 Iranians who had been bitten by rabid animals--nine by wolves and 36 by dogs. Not a single victim developed rabies or showed a severe allergic reaction. Reason: the new vaccine, unlike the old, is cultured in human rather than animal cells. Thus, while the patients develop antibodies against rabies, they do not suffer painful reactions to the foreign animal protein.

A decade in development by Philadelphia's Wistar Institute, the vaccine is licensed only for clinical trials in the U.S. But the latest results, following a similarly successful test in West Germany, should hasten the day when it is sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration for any American who has been nipped by a possibly rabid animal.

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