Rabies Vaccination Revisited

Each year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releases a comprehensive report detailing the number of reported rabies cases in 49 states and Puerto Rico. The most up-to-date report, which details 2003 cases, reveals that more

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Each year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releases a comprehensive report detailing the number of reported rabies cases in 49 states and Puerto Rico. The most up-to-date report, which details 2003 cases, reveals that more than 7,000 cases were reported in a variety of wild and domestic animal species across the country. (Researchers currently are compiling 2004 data, and scientists say it’s too early to speculate on reported U.S. rabies cases in 2004 or 2005.)


Eighteen states reported rabies cases in horses and mules, with seven of these states reporting more cases than the previous year.


No one knows for sure why there was an increase in some areas and a decrease in others, say the researchers, who report their results annually in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. They add that rabies vaccinations are the best insurance that a horse (or other animals that can be vaccinated for rabies) will not develop the disease.


Lead author on the 2004 study covering 2003 rabies cases was John Krebs, MS, a public health scientist at the CDC cautions that many cases of rabies remain unreported, and the number of cases is actually greater than the reported amount. He says that while dogs, cats, and cattle are generally the domestic animals most “frequently reported rabid,” State Health Departments report around “50 plus or minus 10” equine rabies cases per year. “Scanning previous years of horses, I can see back in 1994, for example, that it was down in the 40s,” says Krebs. “We had a banner year in 1998 with 82 horses (an exception to the prior 50 +/- 10 rule). I can’t really say why, but looking at the broad span, probably the highest numbers are usually from the Western states, and that’s primarily skunk rabies habitat, and there could have been just more infection due to interaction with rabid skunks during that period of time

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