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It had started a month earlier when a bat had bitten his finger. But Jeanna Giese, 15, and her parents do not make the link between the bite and the strange symptoms.
The girl looked double and felt sick. Finally, she contracted in her body and spoke blurred. And it quickly got worse, according to the Radiolab podcast.
Listen to the entire episode Rodney vs. Death of 2013, here.
Brain inflammation was excluded. And it was only when the family mentioned the bat bite that the hospital doctor bleached to understand it: the girl was suffering from rabies.
And that meant that she was going to die. Because it is almost 100% certain that it will end when the infection breaks out.
experience
Jeanna was transported to another Wisconsin hospital.
The parents were naturally crushed by the news. Could not the doctors really do anything?
In fact, it does not work. But Dr. Rodney Willoughby decided to try something very experimental.
He let the 15-year-old get into an artificial coma.
The rabies virus uses the time it takes to travel from the bite site to its target, the brain. The journey into the nervous system can take weeks and months.
This time is the treatment window. But if the virus spreads to the brain and the symptoms begin to appear, it is too late.
Because from here it's going fast. Most people die in the week.
Has bought extra time
The immune system has nothing to do with the aggressive virus of rabies, which doctors have experienced over the centuries with a number of strange remedies – probably in desperation.
After looking for straw in many articles about patients with rabies, Willoughby discovered a theory that rabies does not destroy the brain but interferes with the activity so that it eventually becomes a kind of short circuit.
But if the vital functions of Jeanna Gieve were kept artificially running, in artificial coma, the immune system might have enough time to defend itself against the virus, thought Willoughby.
He also prescribed a number of medications.
In the worst case, she would die or survive in a so-called state of immobilization where she would have been conscious but unable to touch and communicate.
They waited as the days went by.
The house after two months
After a week, samples of the girl's cerebrospinal fluid showed that the body had mobilized more antibodies against rabies.
The doctors tried to get her out of a coma, but she became feverish and left her waiting one more week.
When they woke up, they saw several good signs. The students were good and it was also a brain activity, says Willoughby in the podcast.
But what is disturbing is that Jeanna did not touch a muscle.
Had she been locked up, as the doctor had feared?
But she was not there.
She had to relearn how to go. After two months, she could return home from the hospital.
Why did Jeanna Giese survive?
The treatment that Jeanna Giese received later became known as the Milwaukee Protocol.
And in the following years, several people were treated the same way, about 30 times according to the Radiolab podcast of 2013. According to the Global Alliance for Rabies Control, 48 people were treated in 2016.
Willoughby himself, in a 2015 research article, says that eight people survived and four of them looked good.
Also in Brazil last year, a boy will have survived after being treated according to the Milwaukee protocol.
However, there is strong disagreement about the treatment and the theory that it is based on what rabies does to the brain. In 2016, researchers strongly cautioned against the method of an article of synthesis.
And there are people who survive rabies without being treated according to the Milwaukee protocol. For example, in 2016, an Indian boy survived through medical intensive care, according to a case study.
Something special among survivors?
But people have undeniably survived after being treated like Jeanna Giese.
But how much can she thank the method? The researchers wondered if some people had an immune profile that was more likely to survive rabies.
In the podcast Radiolab, researcher Sergio Recuenco tells a study that he and his colleagues have done in Peru. They found that 7 out of 63 people tested had anti-rabies antibodies in the body without being infected. They must have been in contact with the virus.
According to a Nature blog, these people may have had a slight sting, but they did not have enough virus to develop a complete infection.
Jeanna Giese also had antibodies in her body when she first arrived at Rodney Willoughby, and that may be why she followed her so well – not the Milwaukee protocol, according to researchers in a 2013 research article.
"There are things that we may not understand in the case of Jeanna Giese, but it was obvious that if she had not had that option, she might not survive," Recuenco said in a statement. podcast.
Minor risk of death after infection by bats
Rabies is a neglected problem in the tropics as it strikes most slums in African and Asian countries, researchers wrote in a 2018 article.
Every quarter, a human being dies of rabies, but the goal of the World Health Organization is that no one dies of this viral disease by 2030, according to the same researchers who point out that the Milwaukee protocol is not recommended.
A little boy is being treated in an anti-rabies clinic in Yemen. The photo was taken on March 2nd of this year. (Photo: Reuters / Mohamed al-Sayaghi / NTB scanpix)
The disease can easily spread to wild animals and is found in Svalbard.
background: Nearly 60,000 people die every year from rabies, but the virus is almost extinct in Europe
No other infectious disease in the world is more lethal than rabies. But researchers write that the risk of dying after the onset of symptoms is less for those who have been infected with bats than for those infected with dogs.
Jeanna Giese was infected by a bat.
The article is first published by Forskning.no
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