California girl is 6th person to survive rabies without vaccination

Rabies is a strange and scary thing. Until 2004, this virus was 100% lethal in humans—without a dose of life-saving vaccine, preferably before symptoms even presented themselves, everybody died. That changed with the introduction of the Milwaukee Protocol, an experimental treatment that calls for patients to be put into medically induced comas and given antiviral drugs. The idea is that, usually, people die not from rabies itself, but from related dysfunction of their nervous system. If you shut down the brain, maybe the dysfunction won't matter as much and you can keep the person alive long enough for their immune system to kill the rabies. The video above tells the story of the first person to survive rabies thanks to the Milwaukee Protocol and how the Protocol works.

The treatment has not worked on everybody. In general, it's worked best on older children and teenagers. This week, 8-year-old Precious Reynolds became the 3rd American—and 6th person ever—saved by the Protocol.

Tests in early May revealed she had the disease after Precious's grandmother took her to the doctor because of flu-like symptoms that grew so serious her grandmother said they began to resemble polio.

"She went to the bathroom and her legs went out from under her," said Shirlee Roby, Precious' grandmother. "I told my husband this is no flu. There is something wrong, we're going back to the emergency room."

Nurses at the hospital thought her chances were slim when she arrived at the pediatric intensive care unit.

"None of us thought she would leave the PICU," Krystle Realyvasquez, a nurse who cared for Precious, said in the statement. "When she did it was unbelievable."

Via Frank Swain

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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alexh

@jimkirk I have been treated for a possible rabies exposure. Slept in a cabin where a bat was discovered but not captured, so it couldn’t be tested. Better safe than sorry. Apparently if they are trapped somewhere without a water source they will try to drink your saliva while you are sleeping!

The treatment is fairly easy, you get a few shots in the hindquarters depending on your bodyweight, then weekly injections in alternating arms. I believe it was 6 visits to the public health office.

Depending on your exposure, apparently the vaccine needs to be injected closer to your brain than the source of the exposure. So dog bites to the face are particularly dangerous.

I believe the coma treatment is for when you start showing neurological symptoms.
Kaleberg

I remembered a survivor back in the early 70s, and thanks to the magic of the internet and courtesy of Time Magazine’s archives, I found the reference. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876853,00.html) Apparently, Matthew Winkler, age 7, was bitten by a bat. He was vaccinated, but the vaccine did not seem to help. His symptoms continued to worsen. They didn’t induce a coma, but they did give him anti-convulsants along with a breathing tube, IV feeding and effectively a pacemaker. He survived.

I know this doesn’t count as surviving without getting a vaccination, but two others died of rabies that year, even with vaccination, so the medical treatment he was given played a major role in his survival.
DarthVain

Probably number one killer is misdiagnosis. Just goes to show that only you are responsible for your own health, not the health system.
- Brainspore
  
  Probably number one killer is misdiagnosis. Just goes to show that only you are responsible for your own health, not the health system.
  
  I hope you’re not implying that people who may have contracted rabies are better off avoiding professional health care. It’s kind of deceptive to say misdiagnosis of rabies symptoms “kills,” more like “misses opportunities to save lives”.
Anonymous

Has a creationist ever said “If your science is so good, why cant you cure rabies?”
Slowermo

Yay, my hometown! Between this and the Milwaukee Brace Milwaukee leads the medical field in medical treatments named after Milwaukee.
- thatbob
  
  Yes, but they should rename it the Willoughby Protocol. Whether or not to rename Milwaukee after him I leave to your judgement.
Anonymous

this will always be the first thing i think about when i hear of a person surviving rabies:

“Her name was Caroline Frances Hubert, and she had three claims to fame…”

http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopi1.html
- snarf
  
  this will always be the first thing i think about when i hear of a person surviving rabies: Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk. (It’s a great sci-fi book)
Nicky G

Not to be confused with the other Milwaukee Protocol, which involves beer, hookers, and several hours of Captain Kangaroo episodes (at least three, not more than five).
Anonymous

@1 -

Not to mention the Milwaukee Sawzall for efficient limb removal.
- Slowermo
  
  I feel foolish Googling that before sounding it out first.
jimkirk

Thanks for sharing that, Alex, glad you recovered.

cheshire hat, thanks for the information. It was the vaccinaion that I was referring to as the “conventional treatment”. When I was a kid there were scary stories about a long series of horribly painful shots into the belly. Maybe they were just youthful exaggerations, but it sounds like treatments have improved since then.

And yeah, it sounds like a rocky road to recovery, not unlike stroke recovery.
jimkirk

Since I’m not going to read the full 66 page protocol in the near future, can anyone with some medical expertise tell me, since this protocol sounds pretty drastic and intense; is it more effective/less traumatic than conventional treatment? Is it something used when it’s too late for conventional treatment? Inquiring minds want to know.
- cheshire_hat
  
  There is no conventional treatment. If contract the disease you die, unless you are vaccinated within a few days of getting bitten (the sooner the better).
  
  Of the 6 persons who have survived 2 died in the rehabilitation phase. So this little girl is not yet entirely out of the woods. At the very least she’ll need a lot of rehabilitation to learn to talk, walk and do normal things again.
Ohhhsnap

I’ve got to say, when I’m a parent, and as an active and involved uncle of almost fourteen years, I would 1) Not let my child pick up a bat and 2) if they were bitten by a wild animal, I would take them to get checked out ASAP.

Maybe if they’d picked up some basic, common sense instead of thinking man has dominion over animals…
- Brainspore
  
  It’s a pity your reading comprehension skills aren’t on par with your perfect track record as a parent or you might have noticed that nobody is even sure when or how this girl contracted rabies. It’s not like some neglectful adult said “hey, why don’t you see if that raccoon will let you pet him!” and then addressed the bite with a band-aid.
  
  Leave the kid’s folks alone, they’ve been through enough. As a fellow parent you should know that we can’t protect kids from everything all the time. The best we can do is to try our best and hope against the worst.
  - daemonsquire
    
    Ohhhsnap was referring to the story, in the embedded video, of the family in Wisconsin, not this latest case, in California. And while I think he may have been a little quick to snap, in his judgement that they were “thinking man has dominion over animals”, snapping’s in his name after all, regardless of how perfect his track records may be.
    
    Watching the video, I found myself surprised to realize that not everyone equates bats with rabies. Growing up, I used to sweep bats out from behind our house’s shutters with a broom. Dad had made us keenly aware of how dangerous they can be, concerning rabies, which only enhanced the fun. If any of us had ever been bitten, it certainly would have been treated like an emergency. So, the spectacle of a church full of people swatting at a swooping bat, then mom letting her girl carry the wounded thing outside, then everyone reacting to the bite with a shrug? It reminds me how big and broad the world of people’s experience is… It amazes me all the more then, that, of 50,000 annual rabies deaths, less than 5 are in the US.
    
    What an amazing sequence of events, too, in so few hours, between her going to hospital, and her doctor developing the idea that spared her life! And five others, as well! Also amazing, that 8 year old Precious, in California, a month after diagnosis, is already being quoted in the paper, given how long it took Jeanna, in Wisconsin, to regain her ability to talk: how the record of success of this “protocol” so clearly illustrates the vitality of youth, in the body’s capacity to heal itself.
    - Brainspore
      
      OK, admittedly that makes Ohhhsnap’s comment less inappropriate.
      
      As for how many Americans don’t think about the risks posed by bats… that’s probably a direct result of that “fewer than 5 deaths per year” statistic. Most Americans, even stupid ones, have a relatively low risk of contracting rabies so that danger isn’t at the forefront in many of our minds.
Anonymous

Anti-vaxxers often argue that medical researchers will never produce protocols that could make vaccines redundant. They further argue that all mainstream medical interventions are inherently dangerous anyway since the worldwide medical profession is beholden only to drug companies who want to keep us all sick and near death so they can profit from it.

Interestingly, anti-vaxxers are jumping on this story of mainstream medical breakthrough as evidence that vaccination is pointless. Weird – but then, cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy are not exactly in short supply among the anti-vax ranks.
- Gulliver
  
  @ Anon #11
  
  Interestingly, anti-vaxxers are jumping on this story of mainstream medical breakthrough as evidence that vaccination is pointless. Weird – but then, cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy are not exactly in short supply among the anti-vax ranks.
  
  A common symptom of dangerously self-centered advanced chronic Luddism.
Anonymous

KETAMIN IN ACTION! This is cool. Magic drug! Keep your brain off!