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Warnings that ‘slow-moving disaster’ in North America raises chances of fatal mad cow-type disease jumping species barrier
When the mule deer buck died in October, it perished in a place most humans would consider the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road. But its last breaths were not taken in an isolated corner of American geography. It succumbed to a long-dreaded disease in the backcountry of Yellowstone national park, north-west Wyoming – the first confirmed case of chronic wasting disease in the country’s most famous nature reserve.
For years, chronic wasting disease (CWD), caused by prions – abnormal, transmissible pathogenic agents – has been spreading stealthily across North America, with concerns voiced primarily by hunters after spotting deer behaving strangely.
The prions cause changes in the hosts’ brains and nervous systems, leaving animals drooling, lethargic, emaciated, stumbling and with a telltale “blank stare” that led some to call it “zombie deer disease”. It spreads through the cervid family: deer, elk, moose, caribou and reindeer. It is fatal, with no known treatments or vaccines.
Wanted to double check if it really could spread to humans:
“This is the first study to show that the barrier for CWD prions to infect humans is not absolute and that there is an actual risk that it can transmit to humans,” says Dr. Sabine Gilch, PhD, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Prion Disease Research at UCVM
https://vet.ucalgary.ca/news/chronic-wasting-disease-may-transmit-humans-research-finds
Well fuck me.
Prions are a fucking nightmare. It’s weird that at the end of day they’re just misfolded proteins.
I’ll rather become a zombie than getting TSE. (My best wishes to those that suffer it and their loved ones.)