Use of serum and vaccine in combination for prophylaxis following exposure to rabies.

Persons seriously wounded by rabid animals in China were administered postexposure rabies treatment with serum and vaccine. Some of these exposures were similar to those described in an attack by a rabid wolf in Iran in 1954, in which some persons developed rabies. Postexposure treatment consisted of the administration of primary hamster kidney cell rabies vaccine and purified equine antirabies serum. Persons with severe wounds from the bites of rabid animals survived without sequelae when the serum and vaccine were administered together within 3 days of the bite, and persons with superficial exposures survived after treatment with vaccine alone. Serum neutralizing antibodies were present 1 year after the patients had received a full course of treatment. Some persons with severe wounds who had not received antiserum and vaccine died of rabies.