REVIEW Open Access Rabies molecular virology, diagnosis, prevention and treatment Muhammad Zubair Yousaf 1,5* , Muhammad Qasim 2 , Sadia Zia 3 , Muti ur Rehman Khan 4 , Usman Ali Ashfaq 2 and Sanaullah Khan 1 Abstract Rabies is an avertable viral disease caused by the rabid animal to the warm blooded animals (zoonotic) especially human. Rabies occurs in more than 150 countries and territories. According to an estimation by WHO, almost 55,000 people die because of rabies every year. The Dogs are the major reason behind this, approximately 99% human deaths caused by dog’s bites. Developing and under developing countries, both are the victims of rabies. With the post-exposure preventive regimes, 327,000 people can prevent this disease annually. The current article mainly covers the genome, virology, symptoms, epidemiology, diagnostic methods, and the high risk countries around the globe. Keywords: Rabies, Zoonosis, Vaccine, Prevention Background Rabies is a zoonotic (transmitted from animals to human) viral infectious disease. This infection is transmitted to human by the animals already suffering from it. The ani- mals which are mainly reported as causes of rabies are; dogs, raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes. Rabies or “Hydro- phobia” is a disease which makes the dogs sick. In many eastern and western countries dogs are vaccinated against it, but it is not controlled yet. Rabies is caused by a virus that, attacks on the nerves system and later excreted in saliva [1]. A person or animal can become a victim of rabies in many ways including [2], a. Bites b. Non-bites exposure c. Human to Human Transmission Bites from rabid animal to human are very common but the other two factors are rare [2]. Rabies affects the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system) with initial symptoms like; flu, fever, headache, but the infec- tion can progress quickly to hallucinations, paralysis, and eventually death [3]. Genome and virology Rabies virus is the “type species” of the Lyssavirus genus of Rhabdoviridae family. The virus is enveloped and has a single stranded, negative sense RNA genome [4]. The RNA genome of the virus encodes five genes whose order is highly conserved. These genes codes for: nucleoprotein (N), phosphoprotein (P), matrix protein (M), glycoprotein (G), and a viral RNA polymerase (L). All rahbdoviruses have two major structural components; helical ribonucleo- protein core (RNP) and surrounding envelops. The two proteins, P and L are associated with RNP. The glycopro- tein forms approximately 400 trimeric spikes, which are tightly arranged on the surface of the virus [5]. The virus nucleoprotein (N) plays critical role in replication and transcription. Both viral transcription and replication are reduced, if the nucleoprotein is not phosphorylated [6]. Rhabdoviruses cell surface receptors are not identified but some researches point outs the phospholipids, especially phophatidyl serine as the cell surface receptor molecule. After endocytosis, pH-dependent fusion with the mem- brane of the endocytic vesicle occurs. The polymerase which is carried out by the virus make five individual mRNA for each protein. These mRNAs are capped, methylated and polyadenylated. The polymerase then tran- scribes the negative-sense genomic RNA into positive sense strand. The switch between transcription and * Correspondence: zubairyousaf0@gmail.com 1 Molecular Parasitology and Virology Laboratory, Department of Zoology, Kohat University of Science and Technology, Kohat, Pakistan Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Yousaf et al. Virology Journal 2012, 9:50 http://www.virologyj.com/content/9/1/50 © 2012 Yousaf et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.