Associated Press 11/23/04: Girl Cured of Rabies With New Treatment

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Girl Cured of Rabies With New Treatment

11/23/04 21:09 EST

 

By JULIET WILLIAMS

The Associated Press

 

WAUWATOSA, Wis. (AP) - Doctors say they used a unique combination of

drugs to cure a 15-year-old girl of rabies, making her the first

known human ever to survive the usually fatal disease without

vaccination.

 

A team of doctors gambled on an experimental treatment and induced a

coma in Jeanna Giese to stave off the rabies infection, said Dr.

Rodney Willoughby, a pediatric disease infection specialist at

Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

 

``No one had really done this before, even in animals,'' Willoughby

said. ``None of the drugs are fancy. If this works it can be done in

a lot of countries.''

 

Only five people in the world before Giese are known to have survived

the rabies virus after the onset of symptoms, said Dr. Charles

Rupprecht, chief of the rabies section at the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

 

Those people had been vaccinated after exposure with a one-time

injection of a drug called rabies immune globulin that contains

antibodies against the virus, followed by five doses of rabies

vaccines within 28 days.

 

Giese's parents, John and Ann Giese, said they did not hesitate when

doctors approached them about trying the experimental treatment. They

already had been told their daughter likely would die.

 

``Miracles can happen,'' John Giese said. ``We believed it from day

one. We had to convince everyone else.''

 

Rupprecht credited Giese's survival to an ``aggressive and heroic treatment.''

 

``Basically we had a race and Jeanna won. Her immune system won,'' he said.

 

The Fond du Lac girl contracted the disease after she was bitten by a

bat while at church Sept. 12, but she did not seek treatment. She

began showing rabies symptoms Oct. 13 and was hospitalized Oct. 15.

Rupprecht said rabies had attacked the girl's central nervous system.

 

He said Giese's survival has caused the CDC to reevaluate its

approach to rabies in humans and scientists now are studying what

drug cocktails would be most effective in animals.

 

Although the United States has only a few cases of human rabies each

year, someone in the world dies of rabies every 15 minutes, Rupprecht

said.

 

In Giese's case, doctors began administering the cocktail of four

drugs after inducing a coma. A spinal tap after treatment started

showed her immune system was responding to fight off the disease,

Willoughby said. They kept her in a coma for about a week.

 

Willoughby said he had not expected Giese to survive when she was

admitted to the hospital. But he said he studied numerous cases of

the disease, and a team of consultants, including CDC officials,

decided within four hours to go ahead with the experimental treatment.

 

``I knew that this was a 100 percent fatal disease, so I knew there

wasn't much we could do,'' Willoughby said.

 

Willoughby said he could not reveal the exact drugs that were used

because medical protocol requires scientists first to publish the

results in a medical journal. He said they were two anesthetic and

two antiviral medications.

 

Willoughby said the treatment will have to be duplicated in another

survivor before it can be credited as a rabies treatment.

 

``At this point it's a great miracle,'' he said.

 

Doctors still don't know whether Giese will have neurological or

physical problems from the attack on her immune system, but

Willoughby said he was hopeful.

 

The girl is out of isolation and in a rehabilitation ward at the

hospital and doctors hope to release her by Christmas. Her parents

said she stood up for the first time Tuesday and recognizes people

when they come in the room.

 

The parents credited the prayers and positive thoughts of hundreds of

well-wishers for their daughter's survival, saying that God worked

through the doctors to save the teen, an avid basketball player who

always helps others.

 

Ann Giese said her daughter was bitten by the bat during a church service.

 

``She wanted the bat out of the church so the bat wouldn't get

hurt,'' she said.

 

Wisconsin's state public health veterinarian, Jim Kazmierczak,

reminded people they should seek treatment after any possible contact

with a bat or a bite from any other wild animal. Symptoms of the

disease usually do not appear until about a month after exposure, and

by then it is too late to get the vaccine.

 

On the Net:

 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/

 

 

 

 

 

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