Why is Rabies so Hard for the Immune System to Kill?

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Happy Halloween. I'm talking about the most nightmare-inducing virus: rabies lyssavirus. But if you came here for the gory details, this might not be the video for you. Instead, I want to have a look at why this virus is so hard to overcome, as it sits at an unbelievable 100% mortality rate once symptoms show. Are our immune systems slacking? Or has rabies evolved some truly terrifying means of evasion?

Sources:

General Rabies Biology:
Davis et. al (2015) - Everything you always wanted to know about Rabies Virus (but were too afraid to ask)

Zhang et. al (2022) - Regulation of innate immune responses by rabies virus

Dynein:
Toba et. al (2006) - Overlapping hand-over-hand mechanism of single molecular motility of cytoplasmic dynein

Rabies Vaccine:
WHO - Preventing Rabies by Vaccination

Assets:
All drawn cell-related assets were done by Toxo.

Irasutoya
Pexels
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Music:
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

[phylumchannel]

First, thank you those of you who corrected me on neurogenesis. I was a bit loose with that bit because in the narrative of rabies, neurogenesis is not known to play a role in to my knowledge. But yes, some populations of neurons can regrow. Whether they make the correct connections is another story.

It seems like there is some confusion when I say that the rabies virus is expensive to have on hand. Every government must make a decision on how to fund rabies countermeasures. For some, like the US, it makes more sense to vaccinate the pool of wildlife, so the government pays to do so so that its citizens have a greatly reduced chance of encountering rabies to begin with (1-3 human cases a year). For other governments, this option might not make as much sense do to any number of factors, and so those governments will invest more heavily on making the rabies vaccine more accessible to humans (and their pets).

[RRQKIPASANGIN]

Rabies to T-cells: YOUR LIFE IS NOTHING, YOU SERVE ZERO PURPOSE.
Rabies to neurons: Your life is everything!

[phantoplasma]

I was bit in the face by a dog, the fact I knew rabies goes straight to the brain scared the shit out of me that day. Not a long distance.

[dbushlife]

This makes feel me more comfortable about not touching grass

[aaabbb]

Rabies: Evolves to target brain.
Brain: Develops vaccines to stop rabies.
Rabies: *surprised pikachu face*

[kenhaze]

You mentioned transmission, but, all told, rabies isn't doing great at the evolutionary arms race. It's not a virus's goal to kill its host; killing its host means no more transmission. Rabies has never been ubiquitous, because it can't be—its hosts would become too few to transmit it. So, as an ultra-deadly virus, its resigned to low background levels of prevalence.

[HectamusYT]

I’ve always said that if rabies somehow evolved to spread via airborne means of transmissions, we are absolutely doomed.

[apple.]

Rabies sees neurons: "Noo! You have so much to live for!"

Rabies sees killer cells: "You should apoptosis yourself NOW!"

[revxd]

ngl thought this video had a million views this is literally criminally underrated what

[The_CGA]

I got bit by a bat that flew up the apartment chimney and decided to take a nap on our bed while we slept.

We took the corpse of the bat (yeah we had to catch and You than Eyes it) to a weird facility like something out of the walking dead in the state capitol where they had us put it in a fridge—a fridge with a door on the other side—for total isolation of the technician.

They called about 2 hours later “that bat had rabies” anyway 3000 dollar ER bill, shots in my butt, thighs, abdomen, and directly on the finger it bit. Felt like they were blowing up my finger like a balloon. Boosters twice again.

Finger twitched kinda weird for about 6 months after that. Landlord’s insurance company settled the hospital bill and I got a new desktop from the leftover money. 6/10

[robertoberto]

every time i see online people with rabies (that are gonna die) i feel so unconformatable, one the scariest diseases.

[davidpowell]

Perhaps the scariest thing about the rabies virus is its ability to change mammalian behavior so as to get the rabies zombie to actively try to spread the virus to new victims by biting them at the same time that the virus has weaponized the saliva of the zombie with large numbers of new infective particles.

[Fatal_Error-lobc]

There's a lot more reasons rabies is difficult for your immune system to find rabies. Not only does rabies destroy the apotosis ability for a neuron, but the way it completely runs past the immune system is funny. See, a neuron is able to send a message to any immune cell saying "kill yourself" to prevent a rampant immune response that damages the nervous system. Rabies completely hijacks that, and forces a neuron to make this message very apparent to any immune cell trying to check up on an infected neuron. Rabies also just, doesn't kill the neuron, ever. This prevents the immune response against dead cells, so basically your immune system will never do anything against rabies. The only reason the vaccine works is because it forces the immune system to make memory cells that recognize rabies, and the antibodies can catch rabies as it tries to hop across neurons. This completely ends the infection process, and it will never make it to your brain with the vaccine. Rabies is also the only infection to exist that you can give a vaccine for after infection because it's so slow due to the sneaky nature of it.

[SylvesterAshcroft]

Mad Cow Disease can also affect humans, and is just as bad as it sounds, but it's surprisingly how incredibly dangerous a lot of animal borne viruses actually are.

[ketsuekikumori]

Now I'm imagining a Cells at Work! CODE BLACK chapter/episode where a T-cell spots a rabies infected cell. It tries to take it down, only to be assassinated by another rabies virus. Of course the day is saved when a needle introduces the vaccine and the cells go into red alert looking for the intruder.

[wunba]

You’ve given me a fear of trying to remember I got bit by any animal in the last 90 days 😬

[MedMonk]

Amazing video Phylum! Im glad you could use my dynein animation in such creative ways! Also i have a newfound fear of rabies now 😅

[upsetspaghettio]

dude rabies was one of my special interests (dont ask) and somehow I didn't know about the apoptosis aspect. really informative and entertaining video :)

[The_hot_blue_fire_guy]

The even more shocking thing is that there have been people who’ve survived late stage rabies! I believe one of the first ever was a teen girl that had to be put in a medical coma in order to allow the body to fight the infection with minimal brain damage. She managed to survive, but even this treatment is often unsuccessful as it has been tried at least a Handful of times after and most of those people died regardless.

[satoruriolu]

The creator wasn't joking about rabies. I once saw an animal in a video acting in a very weird way, only for me to google "Zombie virus on animals" out of curiosity and being led into rabies. Its the closest we have for it, and he isn't joking about the cute cam - its really sad to see how animals and humans end up after an infection.

Really nice video explaining pretty much everything about it