Early Excretion of Rabies Virus in Saliva of Foxes and Dogs

In red fox sylvatic rabies area, red foxes, badgers, roe deers and stone martens were controlled for the presence of rabies virus in salivary glands (Table 2). These species correspond to the most frequent wildlife victims of sylvatic rabies and all of them except stone martens showed a high percentage of presence of rabies virus in salivary glands in these natural conditions. The comparison of the titres and percentages obtained in Switzerland (Wandeler et al., 1974) and in France 10 years later (Barrat, unpublished data) showed no difference neither in these wild species nor in domestic dogs. This absence or non detected evolution of the virus was experimentally confirmed on foxes (Aubert et al.; 1991) : two isolates of fox virus obtained on naturally rabid red foxes in 1976 and in 1986 in France induced rabies within the same mean delay between inoculation and death but the older strain did it with a larger dispersion of delays. Monoclonal antibodies showed a difference in epitopes of the site 2 of the nucleocapsid of the two strains.