One clinic visit for pre-exposure rabies vaccination (a preliminary one year study)

We performed an abbreviated prospective study of rabies pre-exposure (PREP) vaccination in 109 volunteers. Group 1, the control group, received the conventional 3 intradermal injections on days 0, 7 and 21. Group 2 received one rabies vaccine injection (0.1 ml intradermally) at 2 sites on a single day. Group 3 was given one full ampule intramuscularly. One year later, all 3 groups received booster injections (0.1 ml at 4 sites) intradermally at one time or 2 injections intramuscularly on days 0 and 3. All subjects achieved a vigorous anamnestic antibody response 7 days after the boosters. These data suggest that one time immunization of one full dose intramuscularly or 2 site injections of 0.1 intradermally on a single day are adequate to prime immune memory and obtain an accelerated immune response one year later.