A 6-year-old Orlando boy who was scratched or bitten by a
bat and contracted rabies has died. Ryker Roque died at an Orlando hospital on
Sunday, according to a post from the online fundraising website GoFundMe.
"We fought, Ryker fought very hard, he is our
soldier," the post said. "We lost our fight today, January 14, 2018.
We have to lay or angel to rest now."
Ryker's father, Henry Roque, lost his job during the ordeal
and now the family seeks donations and prayers, the post said.
The boy was bitten by a bat and became infected with the
rabies virus, the post said. Two weeks later, the boy began experiencing spasms
and couldn't walk, so they rushed him to the hospital.
Multiple media outlets reported that Ryker's father found a
bat and placed it into a bucket. Henry Roque told the boy not to touch it, he
said, but Ryker reached in and touched the animal anyway. Henry said the bat
scratched his son.
He told NBC News that he frantically Google searched what to
do, so he washed his son's hands with soap and hot water for several minutes.
The boy was scared of getting a rabies shot though, so he didn't receive
treatment soon enough.
Later, Ryker started experiencing finger numbness and a
headache.
According to Today.com, Henry Roque said: "They went
frantically looking for the other doctors to tell them that it was a bat and
how severe it was. And then they all came in. We had a conference and they explained
to me that it's almost always lethal."
He was put into a medically induced coma and underwent a
treatment known as the "Milwaukee Protocol" in hopes of saving his
life. The treatment has saved the lives of two other children in America.
According to the Mayo Clinic, rabies is a deadly virus that
spreads to people from the saliva of infected animals and is usually
transmitted through a bite. Bats are among the animals most likely to transmit
rabies in America. Once symptoms of rabies begin to show, the disease is nearly
always fatal, the organization said.
Symptoms include: fever, headache, nausea, vomiting,
agitation, anxiety, confusion, hyperactivity, excessive salivation,
hallucinations, insomnia and partial paralysis.
Rabies kills more than 59,000 people every year, mostly
children in Africa and Asia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
He said he washed the wound thoroughly but didn't take the
boy to the hospital because he cried when he was told he would get shots.
McDermid RC, Saxinger L, Lee B, Johnstone J, Gibney RT,
Johnson M, Bagshaw SM. Human rabies encephalitis following bat exposure: failure of
therapeutic coma. CMAJ. 2008 Feb 26;178(5):557-61.
We started the Milwaukee Protocol 15 days after symptom
onset (3 days after diagnosis). The Protocol consisted of inducing a
therapeutic coma (infusions of ketamine, midazolam and propofol titrated to
burst-suppression pattern on the electroencephalogram) and antiviral therapy
(ribavirin, amantadine). We also provided metabolic supplementation (with
tetrahydrobiopterin and L-arginine). We monitored regional cerebral perfusion
using transcranial Doppler ultrasonography. Serial serum, saliva and
cerebrospinal fluid samples were assessed weekly for immune response and viral
clearance.
Jackson AC. Current and future approaches to the therapy of
human rabies. Antiviral Res. 2013 Jul;99(1):61-7.
Abstract
Human rabies has traditionally been considered a uniformly
fatal disease. However, recent decades have seen several instances in which
individuals have developed clinical signs of rabies, but survived, usually with
permanent neurologic sequelae. Most of these patients had received prophylactic
rabies vaccine before the onset of illness. The best outcomes have been seen in
patients infected with bat viruses, which appear to be less virulent for humans
than strains associated with other rabies vectors. In 2003, an article by
rabies experts suggested that survival might be improved through a combination
of vaccine, anti-rabies immunoglobulin, antiviral drugs and the anesthetic
ketamine, which had shown benefit in an animal model. One year later, a girl in
Milwaukee who developed rabies after bat exposure was treated with some of
these measures, plus a drug-induced (therapeutic) coma, and survived her
illness with mild neurologic sequelae. Although the positive outcome in this
case has been attributed to the treatment regimen, it more likely reflects the
patient's own brisk immune response, as anti-rabies virus antibodies were
detected at the time of hospital admission, even though she had not been
vaccinated. This conclusion is supported by the failure of the "Milwaukee
Protocol" to prevent death in numerous subsequent cases. Use of this
protocol should therefore be discontinued. Future research should focus on the
use of animal models to improve understanding of the pathogenesis of rabies and
for the development of new therapeutic approaches.
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