There are 9 Stages that the rabies virus goes through:
Stage 1: Adsorption- Receptors and Virion Infection
Stage 2: Penetration- Virus Entry
Stage 3: Uncoating- Envelope Removal
Stage 4: Transcription- Synthesis of mRNA's
Stage 5: Translation- Synthesis of 5 Structural Proteins
Stage 6: Processing- G-Protein Gycosylation
Stage 7: Replication- Production of Genomic RNA from + Intermediate Strand
Stage 8: Assembly
Stage 9: Budding- Complete Virions
The Rabies Virus: Can be transmitted by saliva and recently discovered organ transplants. In the past there have been cases of rabies transmission through corneal Transplants in the past, but only one of these occurred in the U.S. out of the 40,000 they do a year (The Dallas Morning News). The path of the virus once inside the body is as such: Rabies enters the body through a bite (usually a bat or some other rabid animal), inside the body it makes its way through the spinal cord, nerves, and the brain, although no signs are actually visible at this time. Once in the brain the virus rapidly reproduces and makes its way into the salivary glands and attacks. This is when you start to see signs of the disease, and the infected animal/person will die within 7 days (www.cdc.gov).
There is no cure once the signs appear, the symptoms of rabies are fever, headache, confusion, hallucinations and insomnia. If you realize you have been bitten and immediately receive the vaccine you should be fine (The Dallas Morning News). Effective treatments that have been given to victims have reduced the rate of death to three in 2002 (The Dallas Morning News). The problem is that most people don't realize they have been bitten until it's too late. This happens because the bite marks from bats usually look like a thorn prick, or insect bites (The Dallas Morning News).
Cross-sectional diagram: (inside view of rabies virus)
