abortive rabies infection?

[aineotter]

in a teenage girl, who was exposed to (though not aware of having been bitten by) bats during a caving trip, and developed encephalitis two months later. The serum antibody tests are pretty convincing; they increased and then fell, which indicates a current, active response, so it sounds like it must have been either rabies or another, previously uncharacterized, lyssavirus.

I'm not sure which alarms me more; the thought that we might have abortive cases of human rabies that could potentially go undiagnosed, or a new emerging lyssavirus that cross-reacts with rabies antibodies.