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NOTE: A surveillance case definition is a set of uniform criteria used to define a disease for public health surveillance. Surveillance case definitions enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions. Surveillance case definitions are not intended to be used by healthcare providers for making a clinical diagnosis or determining how to meet an individual patient’s health needs.

CSTE Position Statement(s)

  • 09-ID-12

Laboratory Criteria For Diagnosis

  • A positive direct fluorescent antibody test (preferably performed on central nervous system tissue)
  • Isolation of rabies virus (in cell culture or in a laboratory animal)

Case Classification

Confirmed

A case that is laboratory confirmed.

Comments

The 1997 case definition appearing on this page was originally published in the 1990 MMWR and re-published in the 2009 CSTE position statement 09-ID-12.1,2 Thus, the 1990, 1997, and 2010 versions of the case definition are identical.

References

  1. CDC. (1997). Case Definitions for Infectious Conditions Under Public Health Surveillance. MMWR, 46(RR-10), 1-55. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00047449.htm
  2. CDC. (1990). Case Definitions for Public Health Surveillance. MMWR, 39(RR-13), 1-43. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00025629.htm

Related Case Definition(s)