ArticlePLoS neglected tropical diseases2026
Estimating total human deaths from rabies: A statistical framework leveraging reports of rabies transmission from deceased organ and tissue donors.
Article in PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Estimating the global burden of human rabies is notoriously challenging because the infection is often misdiagnosed or not reported. Although rare, instances of donor-derived human-to-human rabies transmission have been identified after organ or tissue transplantation. Here, we present a statistical framework leveraging these instances to estimate both the probability that a death from rabies is diagnosed for an infected individual and the number of total deaths from rabies. Of the 33 canine-rabies-endemic and 13 canine-rabies-free countries assessed, rabies was identified among deceased donors after transplantation in China (n = 4) between 2015 and 2024 and the United States of America (US) (n = 3) between 2000 and 2024. Assuming the same proportion of deaths from rabies among deceased donors and decedents in the general population, we estimated that China and the US diagnosed rabies in only 28.7% (95%CI: 14.8-56.5%) and 6.1% (95%CI: 2.4-21.1%) of rabies decedents, respectively, during the study years. In 2024, these corresponded to 581 (95%CI: 308-1,056) and 75 (95%CI: 19-242) estimated total deaths from rabies compared to 167 and 4 reported deaths from rabies, respectively. Although parameters were imprecisely estimated for the remaining countries, for countries with a relatively large number of deceased donors, our framework provided informative upper confidence bounds on total deaths from rabies, which can inform the design of surveillance and control measures. For example, in 2023, this upper bound was estimated to be 2,227 deaths from rabies for India. Parameter estimates were sensitive to the assumed relative risk of rabies between deceased donors and decedents in the general population, highlighting the need for future research to estimate this quantity and improve inference within our framework. Our findings show substantial underreporting of human deaths from rabies in both canine-rabies-endemic and canine-rabies-free countries, underscoring the need to strengthen surveillance and diagnostic capacity and raise risk awareness.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.