Human Rabies: A Reemerging Disease in Costa Rica?

摘要

Two human rabies cases caused by a bat-associatedvirus variant were identified in September 2001 in CostaRica, after a 31-year absence of the disease in humans.Both patients lived in a rural area where cattle had a highrisk for bat bites, but neither person had a definitive historyof being bitten by a rabid animal. Characterization of therabies viruses from the patients showed that the reservoirwas the hematophagous Vampire Bat, Desmodus rotun-dus, and that a sick cat was the vector