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Rabies has the highest case-fatality rate of any currently recognized infectious disease with an estimated 55,000 human deaths per year. The disease is routinely diagnosed in animals based on clinical signs and on epidemiological grounds in rabies-endemic countries. The use of conventional diagnostic tests including the fl uorescent antibody test (FAT), rabies tissue-culture infection test (RTCIT) and mouse inoculation test (MIT) can now be complemented with molecular diagnostic tools such as reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and in situ hybridisation (ISH). Negative diagnostic test results do not exclude the clinical diagnosis as these tests are entirely dependent on the quality of the sample supplied. Molecular tools and virus typing are becoming more widely used for the rapid detection and strain identifi cation of rabies viruses from ante-mortem clinical samples. The currently available diagnostic methodologies for both post-mortem and ante-mortem detection of rabies virus are reviewed.
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