ReviewPLoS neglected tropical diseases2020
Rabies virus-neutralising antibodies in healthy, unvaccinated individuals: What do they mean for rabies epidemiology?
Review in PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 66 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evaluation of Bait Acceptance and Immune Response in a Local Dog Population During an Oral Rabies Vaccination Field Study in Cambodia.Tropical medicine and infectious disease · 2026Article
- Detection of rabies virus RNA in dog-bite wounds in a rabies-endemic area: evidence from an observational cohort study.EBioMedicine · 2026Observational
- Integrated Surveillance ofAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Kinetics of rabies-neutralising antibodies in non-human primates after the injection of adjuvanted and inactivated rabies vaccine.The Onderstepoort journal of veterinary research · 2026Article
- Rabies virus circulation in domestic mammals from a peri-urban area at the Pedra Branca Forest, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical · 2026Article
- A Rabies Virus Nucleocapsid-like Nanostructure Vaccine Based on Dual-Cationic Lipid Nanoparticles.Vaccines · 2025Article
- European distribution and intramuscular pathogenicity of divergent lyssaviruses West Caucasian bat virus and Lleida bat lyssavirus.iScience · 2025Article
- Rabies seropositive individuals, dogs, and healthcare professionals without prior vaccination in four Brazilian Indigenous communities.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Serological evidence of natural exposure to rabies in rural populations in Gabon.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2024Article
- Toward the Development of a Pan-Lyssavirus Vaccine.Viruses · 2024Article
- Rabies Virus-Neutralizing Antibodies in Free-Ranging Invasive Wild Boars (Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Bayesian modeling of post-vaccination serological data suggests that yearly vaccination of dog aged <2 years old is efficient to stop rabies circulation in Cambodia.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2024Article
- Sf9 Cell Metabolism Throughout the Recombinant Baculovirus and Rabies Virus-Like Particles Production in Two Culture Systems.Molecular biotechnology · 2024Article
- Tracking lethal threat: in-depth review of rabies.Open veterinary journal · 2023Review
- Evaluation of an iELISA for detection and quantification of rabies antibodies in domestic dog sera.Vaccine · 2023Article
- Sf9 Cells Metabolism and Viability When Coinfected with Two Monocistronic Baculoviruses to Produce Rabies Virus-like Particles.Molecular biotechnology · 2023Article
- Comparing Control Intervention Scenarios for Raccoon Rabies in Southern Ontario between 2015 and 2025.Viruses · 2023Article
- Risks related to a possible reduction of the waiting period for dogs after rabies antibody titration to 30 days compared with 90 days of the current EU legislative regime.EFSA journal. European Food Safety Authority · 2022Article
- Rabies shows how scale of transmission can enable acute infections to persist at low prevalence.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2022Article
- Antibody response to Raboral VR-G® oral rabies vaccine in captive and free-ranging black-backed jackals (Canis mesomelas).The Onderstepoort journal of veterinary research · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Rabies has been a widely feared disease for thousands of years, with records of rabid dogs as early as ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts. The reputation of rabies as being inevitably fatal, together with its ability to affect all mammalian species, contributes to the fear surrounding this disease. However, the widely held view that exposure to the rabies virus is always fatal has been repeatedly challenged. Although survival following clinical infection in humans has only been recorded on a handful of occasions, a number of studies have reported detection of rabies-specific antibodies in the sera of humans, domestic animals, and wildlife that are apparently healthy and unvaccinated. These 'seropositive' individuals provide possible evidence of exposure to the rabies virus that has not led to fatal disease. However, the variability in methods of detecting these antibodies and the difficulties of interpreting serology tests have contributed to an unclear picture of their importance. In this review, we consider the evidence for rabies-specific antibodies in healthy, unvaccinated individuals as indicators of nonlethal rabies exposure and the potential implications of this for rabies epidemiology. Our findings indicate that whilst there is substantial evidence that nonlethal rabies exposure does occur, serology studies that do not use appropriate controls and cutoffs are unlikely to provide an accurate estimate of the true prevalence of nonlethal rabies exposure.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.