(A) Geographic distribution of the major terrestrial carnivore hosts of rabies virus variants. Each region is largely characterized by a unique rabies variant specific to a single carnivore host. (B) Neighbor-joining tree for nucleotide sequence of a 320-bp region of the nucleoprotein gene of selected RABV isolates from the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Each group of virus isolates that was sequenced to illustrate the unique RABV variants associated with terrestrial carnivores is boxed. The Polar Fox variant (Artic and red fox) is no longer considered enzootic in the United States. Bootstrap values are shown at the branching point for clades recovered in .700/1000 iterations of the data. ABLV was used as the outgroup and to root the tree. Samples from a rabid fox in Ontario, Canada (CN OT FX 2/4), and from two human rabies cases with exposures to rabid dogs in Mexico (MX/TX HM 1976 and 1979) are included to show variants of RABV shared across international boundaries. U.S. samples are identified by a two-letter abbreviation for the state and animal from which the sample originated, followed by the year the case occurred. With the exception of the Canadian sample (GenBank accession U11735), all RABV sequences were derived from samples in a virus repository at CDC. (Taken from Real et al45)

Cases of animal rabies in the United States, by year, 1955–2006.8 Courtesy of http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/docs/rabies_surveillance_us_2006.pdf

Detection of rabies virus antigens by dFA (A) and immunohistochemistry (B). The virus foci show positive stains with green-fluorescent color (A). Courtesy of http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/diagnosis.html. The paraffin embedded slide was stained by anti-RV nucleoprotein monoclonal antibody 802-2. Rabies antigens in the cytoplasm and inclusions are shown in brown (using diaminobenzidine as the substance) and the cell nuclei are shown in blue (B).