Tuesday, May 14, 2013

2012 Rabies Survey

The 2012 Rabies Summary was just released from the Iowa Department of Public Health.  The annual summary tracts the number of rabies cases in the state of Iowa  based on data from the Iowa Hygenic Laboratory in Iowa City and the Iowa State Diagnostic Lab in Ames.  In 2012 there were a total of  31 animals that tested positive for rabies; 17 bats, 9 skunks, 1 cat and 4 cows.  The average number of animal rabies cases per year is down from the past 12 year average of 51. In 2012 a total of 1011 animal were tested. In Iowa the main resevoirs for the rabies virus are skunks and  bats.  Both the bat and skunk rabies strains can be spread to any mammal usually via a bite.  The last rabies case in a human in Iowa was 2002.  The one previous to that one was 1951.  The 2002 case was a 20 year old male residing in Linn County.  It was determined that the variant of the virus in that case was the most similar to variants found in the silver-haired and eastern pipostrelle bats.  The most common species of bats tested in 2012 were the Big Brown bat and the Little brown bat. In the majority of human cases of rabies it is not determined how the person contracted it largely due the the the inability to get adequate exposure histories from neurologically impaired patients and that bites from very small mammals such as bats might go
 unnoticed.  Human rabies cases have dropped signifcantly in the United States largely from increased vaccination of domestic dogs from an average of 11 persons per year in the 1950s to 3  by the 1990s.  Once symptoms begin rabies is 100% fatal.  (pictured above: Big Brown bat-Eptesicus fuscus)