A life-threatening infection like mad cow disease is spreading in deer in the United States and could also infect humans.
Experts and officials are monitoring cases of chronic wasting disease which attacks the spinal cord, brain and other tissue.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease, also called ‘zombie deer,’ has already spread to at least 26 states.
About a year after an animal is infected with chronic wasting disease or CWD, it suffers drooling, progressive weight loss, aggression, listlessness, lack of fear and lack of awareness before it dies. The condition is caused by proteins (prions) that attack the spinal tissue and the brain.
The symptoms of the disease are similar to mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which took lives of over 100 in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Discovered in 1967, CWD can spread through bodily fluids and contamination of food, water or soil. There is no cure or treatment for it and it is fatal to infected animals.
It is feared the deadly disease could easily infect humans through infected meat.
“We could be having human transmission occurring today and we wouldn’t even know it,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said to the Independent.
“The key issue here is that unlike the mad cow disease, here we see (chronic wasting disease) in the muscle as well, so it’s actually much more present in the meat that you’re eating.”
He added: “Cooking doesn’t do anything to destroy it.”
Peregrine Wolff, a veterinarian working with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, said that there was no way to stop the deadly disease from harming deer populations.
She said to local politicians: “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. We know that we can’t wrap Nevada in a bubble.”
According to the CDC, there have been no known human transmissions of CWD. But a recent study found that macaques could get infected after consuming infected meat.
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