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Chronic wasting disease (CWD), sometimes called zombie deer disease, is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) affecting deer.TSEs are a family of diseases thought to be caused by misfolded proteins called prions and include similar diseases such as BSE (mad cow disease) in cattle, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, and scrapie in sheep. [2]
Scientists have warned a “zombie deer disease” could spread to humans after hundreds of animals were infected with the illness in the US over the last year.. Chronic wasting disease (CWD ...
Can the disease spread to humans? What is CWD? Chronic Wasting Disease is a progressive, fatal disease that affects the brain, spinal cord and many other tissues of farmed and free-ranging deer ...
Found 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 across all parts of ...
TSEs in non-human mammals include scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle – popularly known as "mad cow disease" – and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk. The variant form of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans is caused by exposure to bovine spongiform encephalopathy prions. [4] [5] [6]
Deer with the peracute form of the disease may go into shock 8–36 hours after the onset of symptoms, and are found lying dead. [2] Death is also common in deer with acute EHD, which is generally comparable to peracute EHD and is characterized by excessive salivation, nasal discharge, and hemorrhaging of the skin. [4]
Yet this disease is not a new occurrence; the first identified case of chronic wasting disease was in captive deer in a Colorado research facility in the late 1960s, then in wild deer in 1981.
Humans are most often infected by tick/deer fly bite or through handling an infected animal. Ingesting infected water, soil, or food can also cause infection. Hunters are at a higher risk for this disease because of the potential of inhaling the bacteria during the skinning process.