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An Unusual Case of Human Rabies Thought to be of Chiropteran Origin


C.D. Meredith
A. P. Rossouw
H. Van Praag Koch

Abstract

On 21 February 1970 a White male patient died in the H. F. Verwoerd Hospital, Pretoria after a 5-day illness diagnosed clinically as rabies. The source of exposure to the disease was reported to be a bat bite sustained approximately 5 weeks earlier. Fluorescent antibody (FA) tests using standard conjugate on the deceased's brain were negative but Negri bodies were found histologically in the Purkinje cells of the cerebellum. A strain of rabies virus not demonstrable with standard FA conjugate was isolated from brain tissue. Specific FA conjugate prepared from this virus revealed the presence of typical rabies fluorescent inclusions in the brain of the deceased.


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eISSN: 2078-5135
print ISSN: 0256-9574