Complete Recovery from Clinical Rabies: Case Report

A 17-year-old male had been bitten by his dog. He was given one dose of rabies vac - cine after being bitten. Twenty days after vaccination, he developed complaints of itching and paresthesia at the bite area on his forearm. He was transferred to our department with the pre - liminary diagnosis of rabies due to his complaints of fever, abdominal pain, dysphagia and difficulty of breathing after 3-5 days. Rabies viral nucleic acid was positive by reverse transcriptase poly - meraze chain reaction in the cerebrospinal fluid and saliva samples, and corneal smear was found positive with fluorescence antibody method. Patient's complaints markedly subsided after hospi - talization and he was discharged on 66th day with complete recovery. In the literature, complete recovery in patients with clinical rabies is limited to a few cases. In this paper, we present the first case recovering from human clinical rabies, whose diagnosis was confirmed by direct diagnostic