Unusual Reaction to Rabies Vaccine

Pasteur demonstrated in 1884 that rabies was caused by an infectious agent, and he developed a rabies vaccine grown in rabbit nervous tissue which was used for active immunization.¹Refinements of this vaccine were in general clinical use until several years ago, even though allergic encephalomyelitis was a frequent complication of treatment.²Rabies vaccine (duck embryo) (DEV) was developed to circumvent these side effects.³Because the virus is not grown on neurological tissue, the allergic complications which sometimes accompanied the earlier Pasteur and Semple vaccines have been virtually eliminated.⁴Systemic reactions to DEV have been rare, so it seems useful to report an unusual reaction pattern we observed in three Peace Corps volunteers who were given the vaccine prophylactically before going to Ethiopia. Report of Cases CASE 1.— A 22-year-old white woman was given 1 cc of DEV subcutaneously. Within 15 minutes abdominal pain, malaise, nausea,