Laboratory diagnosis of rabies

Reported Case Report of Recovery From Rabies Using Intrathecal Rabies Immune Globulin was Flawed

“…Saliva is a much more reliable fluid sample for detection of rabies virus RNA by a PCR assay. 3 In this report, saliva was negative on samples from 11 different days. Detection was positive only on day 1 in urine, but not in saliva or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), at a time in which there were no clinical features of rabies encephalomyelitis, which raises serious concerns about potential problems with the PCR assay.…”

Molecular characterisation of human rabies in East Africa - a case series report and phylogenetic investigation.

“…Ante-mortem diagnostic tests include antigen detection, antibody assays and virus isolation, but all have limited success [8]. Postmortem tests are rarely performed due to lack of personnel trained to collect samples, lack of accredited laboratories (Biosafety Level 2 or 3) for diagnosis and because many clinical cases return home in the absence of palliative care options and are subsequently not reported within surveillance networks which might allow the possibility of sample collection [15]. The direct uorescent antibody test (DFA) is the recommended "gold standard" for post-mortem diagnosis [21], but requires uorescence microscopy which is expensive and limited in availability.…”

“…More generally, sequencing could provide key insights into how rabies circulates within different populations and the processes responsible for its maintenance in speci c geographic localities [14]. Incountry genome sequencing of rabies viruses from human rabies cases on the African continent has so far only been carried out in South Africa [5,[15][16][17], although partial genome sequences are available from one human rabies case from Senegal [18] and one human rabies case from Nigeria [19]. In this case series we report rabies virus whole genomes sequenced from ve human rabies cases in East Africa, investigating the factors leading to each death and how such deaths might be prevented in future.…”

Physico-chemical characterization studies of collagen labelled with Ru(II) polypyridyl complex

“…The use of radioactive isotopes, despite having tremendous advantages due to its sensitivity, also poses serious environmental risk. One of the most commonly used organic fluorophores for the labelling of proteins or DNA is fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. However, fluorescein has its own drawbacks such as Stokes’ shift of 30 nm, shorter lifetime and higher light-scattering effects [ 8 ].…”