One or three intradermal injections within one week for rabies pre-exposure immunization.

Pre-exposure rabies vaccination is recommended fortravellers to endemic countries and forselected populations in highly endemic regions. It consists of three injections administered over 3-4 weeks. Travellers often ignore or do not have enough time to receive a complete course prior to departure or leave with only one or two injections.

Prospective immunogenicity study of multiple intradermal injections of rabies vaccine in an effort to obtain an early immune response without the use of immunoglobulin.

The present study sought to determine whether increasing and accelerating rabies vaccine administration would result in earlier protective levels of neutralizing antibody. Results indicated that the 8-site and double-dose Thai Red Cross intradermal regimens produced higher antibody titers by day 14 but not significantly higher titers by days 5 and 7. Administration of rabies immunoglobulin into and around bite wounds on the first day of rabies prophylaxis should remain the optimal postexposure treatment.

Antibody response after a four-site intradermal booster vaccination with cell-culture rabies vaccine.

The current World Health Organization recommendation for booster vaccination of previously immunized individuals with potential exposure to rabies is two doses of vaccine intramuscularly or intradermally on days 0 and 3. We report responses to two types of postexposure treatment of healthy individuals who had received preexposure rabies vaccination 1 year previously. Group A individuals received four intradermal doses (one-fifth of the diluent volume of vaccine per dose) on day 0, and group B individuals received two intramuscular doses on days 0 and 3.

Problems with rabies postexposure management: a survey of 499 public hospitals in Thailand.

Rabies is still a major public health problem in Asia. The incidence of known annual human cases in India alone has recently been revised from 20,000 to 30,000, and over 500,000 patients are given some form of postexposure rabies treatment. Only China, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand are reporting a significant decrease in the prevalence of this disease in humans.