A new human antibody to neutralise the rabies virus, developed by the Serum Institute of India and the University of Massachusetts, is being tested among 84 people at the KEM hospital in Mumbai.

More than 50,000 people are bitten by dogs in India every year and the present vaccine takes at least ten days to develop antibodies to circulate in the system. The new antibody is not a substitute for the present vaccine, but is useful in cases where people have suffered dog bites near nerve endings at three-four places.

Dr S V Kapre, executive director of Serum Institute of India Limited, told The Indian Express that the need for such an antibody was to bridge the time lag between the vaccine being administered and the formation of antibodies.

“It takes 7-10 days for the antibodies to be formed after the vaccine is administered. The immediate administration of this new antibody would help in neutralising the rabies virus,” says Kapre.

“This is a human monoclonal antibody (MAB) developed to treat people bitten by rabid animals. India was selected for the present study as the country faces a serious problem of rabies,” he added. The rabies virus can cause acute encephalitis that may prove to be fatal.

Patients can be protected from the disease using a rabies vaccine and human rabies immune globulin (hRIG) soon after exposure. However hRIG, which is derived from human blood, is expensive and often not available in developing countries. Hence, equine immune globulin derived from horse serum is used in many parts of the world; but that is also scarce and can have side-effects.

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