“There is no contingency plan.”

health

by andrew coat

Ah, deer.

Scientists are sounding the alarm over the spread of ‘zombie deer disease’ amid concerns it could evolve and infect humans.

Late last year, experts called Yellowstone National Park’s first confirmed case of the highly contagious disease (formerly known as Chronic Wasting Disease) after a deer carcass found in the park’s Wyoming region tested positive for the highly contagious disease. (known as) was confirmed.

Infections have now been reported in deer, elk, and elk in 33 states, Canada, Norway, and South Korea.

According to the New York State Department of Health, the disease “damages parts of the brain and typically causes progressive deterioration, behavioral changes, excessive salivation, and death.”

It has a 100% mortality rate and there is no treatment or vaccine.

“The bottom line is we’re completely unprepared,” Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, told KFF Health News earlier this month.

“If we see a spill now, we’re going to be in free fall. There’s no contingency plan for what to do or how to follow up.”

Scientists say humans are most likely to contract the disease through eating infected venison.

However, there are no known cases of human infection, although up to 15,000 infected deer and elk are thought to be eaten each year.

But that doesn’t mean the disease can’t mutate.

CWD is caused by misfolded proteins known as prions. And another prion disease, first discovered in animals, has evolved to infect humans.

Sabine Gilch, a researcher at the University of Calgary in Canada, recently described how mad cow disease, officially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, “climbed the barrier of transmission from animals to humans.”

“During the BSE crisis, BSE was transmitted to humans through contaminated meat and food, causing a new form of human prion disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,” she explained.

Although Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease cannot be transmitted from person to person through direct contact or airborne transmission, scientists believe it may be a form of CWD.

To test that theory, Gilch and her team took CWD isolates from infected deer and injected them into a “humanized” mouse model.

The mice were then found to develop CWD and shed infectious prions in their feces.

“This suggests that CWD in humans is contagious and can be transmitted from person to person,” Gilch warned.