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The infectious prions that cause Chronic Wasting Disease, an infection similar to BSE that afflicts North American deer and elk have been found in the parts of the animals that people eat. No one knows if CWD can jump to humans, but if it does hunters in affected areas might be at risk.

CWD was first diagnosed as a spongiform encephalopathy in captive deer and elk in Colorado in the 1970s, and in wild deer and elk in the region in the 1980s. But in the 1990s it spread widely within the elk farming industry, jumped to wild deer, and now affects two provinces of Canada and 13 US states.

Like the related sheep disease scrapie – though unlike BSE – CWD spreads from animal to animal, says Glenn Telling of the University of Kentucky at Lexington, US. Deer housed with infected animals, or fed infected brain experimentally, contract the disease.

Because of this there are fears that the CWD prion might be distributed widely in the deer’s tissues – as scrapie is in sheep. Efforts to find the infectious prion in the muscle of infected animals, by seeing whether antibodies to the prion could find any and bind on, have previously failed.

But Telling’s lab has now shown that diseased prions can reside in muscle of deer infected with CWD, by using transgenic mice.
Transgenic mice

The team replaced the gene for the normal mouse version of the prion protein with the normal gene from deer, so the mice made the normal, healthy deer protein. They then injected the mouse brains with tissue from infected deer. Twelve to 18 months later, the mice developed encephalopathy.

Tissues from both the infected deers' brains and thigh muscle caused disease. Muscle took slightly longer to cause disease than brain tissue, showing it had slightly less prion.

“We don’t know that it is transmitted in the wild by animals eating muscle from infected animals,” cautions Telling. “We now have to see where else the prion might be,” including saliva and even excrement, using more transgenic mice.
Brain warnings

“Because we tested deer that were already ill,” he told New Scientist, “we don’t know what the distribution of prion is in animals that are still incubating the disease.” Hunters have been warned by wildlife agencies not to kill and eat obviously ill animals, but an animal not yet showing signs of the disease might still carry the abnormal prion, albeit less of it.

It is also unknown whether people can catch encephalopathy by eating CWD-infected meat, as they can from eating BSE-tainted meat. Anecdotal reports that hunters develop the human prion disease CJD in unusual numbers have never been confirmed. State officials have issued warnings to hunters not to eat brain or spinal cord – the tissues most affected.

“If I were a hunter I would be cautious about eating deer in areas affected,” says Telling. But he notes that not much testing of wildlife has been done, and it is not clear how prevalent the infection is.

Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1122864)

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ORIGINAL: atlasman

No one cares about this???


Really??


It only says that the infective prions of CWD may be in the muscle tissue of an infected animal. Considering that they have never thought this to be true.........and those mucles are what we are cutting up on our dinner plates I would think that more people would have found this topic worth discussion........especially in light of CWD popping up in more places every year.......Kansas being the latest victim.

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ORIGINAL: wolfen68

I care more now than I ever did before being that my home state is the "latest victim"....you never think it's going to happen to you.

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ORIGINAL: atlasman


It's a real shame that people need something to "happen to them" before they care about it.

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ORIGINAL: wolfen68

Who said I didn't care about it?

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I just am more concerned now that it's at my back door.

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Yet there is still nothing different I can do to change things.

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ORIGINAL: game4lunch

What's your point atlasman?

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I hope this is not another overreaction to an uncertain problem.

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Let me first say that it appears to me that no testing of any kind should be done to lab mice or rats.

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"No known transfer of the disease has ever been found in humans." This is a powerfull statement.

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Overreaction causes stupid acts to take place.

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So I figure, so long as I'm not in the deer family . . .

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Here's the mostimportant thing, infected animals are easy to see and detect.

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What scares me the most, is overreacting to an unknown.

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ORIGINAL: game4lunch

I guess my question should have been, "So does this mean you are done as a deer hunter?"

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Very simple solution is to have the animal checked by proper authorities before eating it. Here in Wyoming it can be done for free.

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I think killing every living animal IS overreacting. And there are areas where this is what was recommended. Just don't like it.

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ORIGINAL: game4lunch

The tests are conducted by the Game & Fish at their labs in conjunction with the University of Wyoming. Even though we're out here at the edge of the planet, I trust their results.

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Would be a real money maker if somebody would come out with a "field test" that was reliable.

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Sure glad they didn't think that way before they had a cure for polio.

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ORIGINAL: chucker34

Not sure I would call the New Scientist a scientific journal. In fact, let me correct myself. I wouldn't. It's more along the lines of Popular Science.

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