Rabies Causes

• For a human to get rabies, 2 things must happen.
  • First, you must have contact with a rabid animal.
  • Second, the contact must allow for the transmission of infected material, which will involve exposure to the saliva of the infected animal usually through a bite or scratch.
  
  
• Contaminated tissue in the rabid animal includes saliva. Other potentially infectious tissue is in the brain or nerve tissue. The virus is transmitted only when the virus gets into bite wounds, open cuts in your skin, or onto mucous membranes (for example, into your eyes or your mouth). The virus then spreads from the site of the exposure to your brain and eventually spreads throughout your body's major organs.
• Ways the virus is transmitted
  • Bites are the most common source of transmission.
  • Scratches by infected animals are far less likely to cause infection but are still considered a potential source of rabies transmission.
  • Bites or scratches are often not confirmed in cases of human rabies traced to bats. Therefore, treatment might be necessary after a close encounter with a bat.
  • In the 20 cases (since 1990) of human rabies associated with a bat, a definite history of a bat bite could be confirmed in only 1 case. It is unclear how the virus was transmitted in the other cases-perhaps by an undetectable bite.
  • Rabies has rarely been transmitted by other means. Examples include inhaling a large amount of bat secretions in the air of a cave by 2 cave explorers and inhaling the concentrated virus in laboratory workers studying rabies.