Two hunters who ate meat from deer known to suffer from chronic wasting disease – or “zombie deer disease” – developed similar neurological disorders and died, raising concerns that the disease could spread from animals to humans. humans.
Discovered in deer in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming in the 1990s, chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been recorded in free-ranging deer, elk and moose in at least 32 states in the continental United States. -United, according to the Centers for US. Disease control and prevention.
Deer infected with CWD may be called “zombie deer” because the disease causes weight loss, lack of coordination, stumbling, listlessness, weight loss, drooling, and a lack of fear of people .
Scientists and health officials fear that CWD could spread to humans, as mad cow disease did in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. In 2022, Canadian scientists published a study based on research in mice, suggesting a risk of CWD transmission to humans.
Here’s what you need to know about chronic wasting disease and whether you should worry about it.
Researchers identify troubling case involving 2 deaths
Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio reported how two hunters who ate game from a deer population known to have CWD died in 2022 after sporadically developing the disease. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which is a neurological disease like CWD.
The second man to die, aged 77, suffered “rapid confusion and aggression”, researchers said, and died after a month despite treatment.
“The patient’s history, including a similar case in his social group, suggests possible further transmission of CWD from animals to humans,” they wrote in the case report, presented earlier this month here at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. and published in the peer-reviewed journal Neurology.
The researchers did not specify where the men lived or hunted. But the highest concentration of CWD-infected deer is in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Wyoming, according to the CDC and U.S. Geological Survey Reports.
Due to the difficulty in distinguishing the diseases, researchers said this case does not represent a proven case of transmission. However, “this group highlights the need for further investigation into the potential risks of consuming CWD-infected deer and its implications for public health,” they write.
“Zombie Deer Disease”:What to know about chronic wasting disease and its spread in the United States.
What is “zombie deer disease”? What are prion diseases?
Also known as chronic wasting disease, “zombie deer disease” is a prion disease, a rare, progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease that affects deer, elk, moose and other animals, the CDC says .
In prion diseases, abnormal folding of certain “prion proteins” leads to brain damage and other symptoms, according to the CDC. Prion diseases, which usually progress quickly and are always fatal, can affect humans and animals.
Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD) and its variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD), which is a form of mad cow disease, are prion diseases found in humans.
Mad cow disease is an example of a prion disease that can spread from livestock to humans, and some researchers have likened it to “zombie deer disease.”
For example, in the case of mad cow disease, it typically took four to six years after infection for cattle to show symptoms, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Deer can have an incubation period of up to two years before symptoms appear. So animals could have the disease but appear normal until symptoms appear, such as weight loss, notes the US Geological Survey.
The development of vCJD in humans as a result of mad cow disease – its official name is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE – due to the consumption of meat from contaminated cattle has worried scientists about the possible transmission of chronic wasting disease (CWD) to humans.
Can “zombie deer disease” be transmitted to humans?
Although there have been no known confirmed cases of deer-to-human transmission of “zombie deer disease,” concerns have increased since authorities discovered CWD in a dead deer in Yellowstone National Park in November.
“So far, there has been no transmission from deer or elk to humans,” Jennifer Mullinax, associate professor of wildlife ecology and management at the University of Maryland, told the BBC. “However, given the nature of prions, the CDC and other agencies have supported all efforts to keep any prion disease out of the food chain.”
If CWD were transmitted to humans, it could create a “potential crisis” similar to that caused by mad cow disease, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told the BBC at the University of Minnesota.
“However, it is important to note that BSE and CWD prions differ structurally and we do not yet know whether the pathology and clinical presentation would be comparable if CWD were transmitted to humans,” he said. he declared.
Meanwhile, chronic wasting disease continues to spread to more states, the most recent being Indiana. The disease was detected earlier this month in a male white-tailed deer in the northeastern part of the state, which borders a part of Michigan where CWD had previously been detected, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
The U.S. Geological Survey updated its chronic wasting disease tracker on Friday to include 33 states (adding Indiana), as well as four Canadian provinces and four other countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden and South Korea). .
Contributors: Sara Chernikoff and Julia Gomez.
Follow Mike Snider on X and Threads: @mikesnider & mikegsnider.
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