A GLOBAL REVIEW OF RABIES VACCINES FOR HUMAN USE

Rabies is one of the oldest known diseases of mankind, yet it has been only slightly more than 100 years since Pasteur developed the first v accine for post-exposure treatment. Since this first crude nerve tissu e vaccine, numerous other rabies vaccines for human use have been deve loped and used with varying degrees of effectiveness and safety. When used appropriately, new cell culture vaccines provide nearly 100% prot ection with a high degree of safety; yet over 40,000 people world-wide die from rabies each year. Several pre- and post-exposure controlled vaccine trials and clinical studies have shown that the purified chick embryo cell (PCEC) vaccine, Rabipur(TM), is as safe and effective as the rabies human diploid cell vaccine (HDCV), which is currently consi dered the gold standard. Additionally, PCEC vaccine does not result in immune-mediated hypersensitivity reactions following booster doses se en in about 6% of those receiving HDCV boosters following an initial s eries of HDCV. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.