TY - JOUR AU - Tu, Wen-Jane AU - Wang, Mei-Chuan AU - Jau, Guo-Chin AU - Tsai, Cheng-Ta AU - Lin, Chung-Ching AU - Inoue, Satoshi AU - Butudom, Prawit AU - Lai, Cheng-Hung AU - Fei, Chang-Young PY - 2020/12/03 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - A study of the temporal dynamics and human exposure to the Formosan ferret-badger (Melogale moschata subaurantiaca) rabies, 2013 to 2019, Taiwan JF - The Thai Journal of Veterinary Medicine JA - TJVM VL - 50 IS - 4 SE - Original Articles DO - UR - https://he01.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/tjvm/article/view/246323 SP - 543-548 AB - <p><span class="fontstyle0">The World Health Organization declared Taiwan rabies-free in 1961. On July 17, 2013, Taiwan confirmed the<br>detection of rabies virus in wild Formosan ferret-badgers. This study investigated the epidemiology of Formosan ferretbadger rabies from July 2013 to December 2019 on Taiwan Main Island. There were two objectives of this study: 1) to<br>study the temporal dynamics of the epidemics during this period; 2) to assess the risk of human exposure to ferretbadger rabies. Results indicated that a total of 805 rabies-confirmed ferret-badgers and 9 cases of spillover infection in<br>non-reservoir hosts. The temporal dynamics showed only the epidemic in Eastern Taiwan exhibited the typical initial<br>epidemic growth pattern; while the epidemics in Western Taiwan and Southern Taiwan appeared to have subsided to<br>enzootic levels as of December 2019. As for human exposure to ferret-badger rabies, all cases of human exposure at<br>home appeared in only one ferret badger and usually occurred in the evening. During the exposures, if a dog were<br>present, it would usually spot the rabid ferret-badger earlier than the attack of the rabid ferret-badger and rush to kill<br>it. There were 48 cases indoors and 21 cases outdoors of human exposure. The relative risk (RR) for human exposure<br>to rabid ferret-badgers without dogs around was 4.73 times that with dogs around indoors (n=214; </span><span class="fontstyle2">p </span><span class="fontstyle0">&lt; 0.0001). The risk<br>for human exposure to rabid ferret-badgers without dogs around was 12.63 times that with dogs around outdoors<br>(n=62; </span><span class="fontstyle2">p </span><span class="fontstyle0">&lt; 0.05). In conclusion, the study showed that keeping dogs could protect people from suddenly unprovoked<br>attacks by rabid ferret-badgers. The distribution of epidemic cases indicated that ferret-badger rabies was still<br>sequestered to the mountainous regions. Dogs and cats should be vaccinated to establish an immunological barrier to<br>stop the spread of the disease.</span> </p> ER -