The discovery of Yellowstone National Park’s first case of chronic wasting disease (CWD) last month has raised concerns that the fatal brain disease may someday spread to humans, according to some scientists.
The discovery of Yellowstone National Park’s first case of chronic wasting disease (CWD) last month has raised concerns that the fatal brain disease may someday spread to humans, according to some scientists.
A deer carcass in the Wyoming area of the park tested positive for the highly contagious prion disease that can also cause weight loss, stumbling, listlessness and neurological symptoms, according to the CDC.
It has been spotted in deer, elk, reindeer and moose in areas of North America, Canada, Norway and South Korea.
Symptoms can take up to a year to develop and some have dubbed it the “zombie deer disease” since it changes in the hosts’ brains and nervous systems, leaving animals drooling, lethargic, emaciated, stumbling and with a telltale “blank stare,” according to the Guardian.
It is fatal, with no known treatments or vaccines.
And now scientists are sounding the alarm that it could infect humans, although no known case has ever been recorded.
Epidemiologists say the absence of a “spillover” case yet does not mean it will not happen.
CWD is one of a cluster of fatal neurological disorders that includes Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly referred to as “mad cow disease.”
“The BSE outbreak in Britain provided an example of how, overnight, things can get crazy when a spillover event happens from, say, livestock to people,” Dr.
