A person appeared to have died of rabies viral infection. As a coroner, you need to verify that the cause of death was rabies. What procedures could you use to confirm the presence of rabies virus?

Question

A person appeared to have died of rabies viral infection. As a coroner, you need to verify that

the cause of death was rabies. What procedures could you use to confirm the presence of

rabies virus? And what will be your preferred sample in the case of rabies infection?

Answer 1

There are numerous experimental designs that can help with this. For one, you could perform an ELISA assay. You would take the serum from the person and then perform ELISA with an antibody specific for rabies and a secondary antibody (your fluorescent probe) to bind to that primary antibody. The readout for this assay would be colorimetric.