SCIENTISTS fear that disease that turns deer into ‘zombies’ could could jump to humans, after hundreds of animals were infected with the fatal illness.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) attacks the brain and nervous system, leaving animals drooling, lethargic, stumbling and stick thin.
GettyCWD can infect most wild and farmed deer species and has been spotted in the US, Canada and Norway[/caption]
The telltale blank stare of infected deer has lead some to dub CWD ‘zombie deer disease’.
It isn’t new, but experts say it has been spreading stealthily across North America, with case numbers rising.
Alarms were sounded after hundreds deer in Yellowstone national park in Wyoming were found to have been infected with the highly contagious and fatal illness.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department tested meat from 6,701 deer, elk and moose in 2022, detecting the disease about 800 samples.
Yellowstone is the US’s most famous nature reserve, attracting millions of visitors yearly.
In 2022 alone, approximately 3.29 million visitors traipsed through the park, according to Statista Research Department.
CWD can affect most wild and farmed deer species and has been found in the US and Canada, as well as South Korea and Norway, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
CWD is caused by prions – abnormal pathogenic proteins – that cause changes in animals brains and nervous systems.
Aside from a blank facial expression, deer may stumble and have poor coordination, appear listless, walk in repeat patterns and have tremors, according to the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
It may take over a year for an infected animal to develop symptoms of the disease, for which there is no treatment or vaccine.
Because of how long it takes symptoms to show, some deer might die before they become drooling and lethargic and get the telltale ‘blank stare’ – but CWD is fatal.
Scientists have been predicting the ‘zombie deer disease’ would reach Yellowstone park for decades, The Guardian reported.
While cases have yet to spotted in humans, experts warn CWD is a “slow moving disaster” and warned governments to prepare for that possibility.
It’s drawn parallels to mad cow disease, fatal brain disease common in cattle that spread to humans in 1980s and 90s. It’s been traced to 178 human deaths since 1995.
“The mad cow disease outbreak in Britain provided an example of how, overnight, things can get crazy when a spillover event happens from, say, livestock to people,” CWD researcher Dr Cory Anderson told The Guardian.
“We’re talking about the potential of something similar occurring. No one is saying that it’s definitely going to happen, but it’s important for people to be prepared.”
Dr Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who studied the outbreak of mad cow disease, called CWD “a slow-moving disaster”.
“We’re dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious. Baked into the worry is that we don’t have an effective easy way to eradicate it, neither from the animals it infects nor the environment it contaminates.”
The pathogen causing CWD can be extremely hard to eradicate, persisting for years in dirt and on surfaces.
Research published in 2019 suggests that it might also have the ability to infect livestock, other mammals, birds and even humans.
Of particular concern is that fact that people might be eating CWD-infected animals without knowing.
In 2017, 7,000 to 15,000 CWD-infected animals a year were unwittingly consumed by humans, according to the Alliance for Public Wildlife.
It estimated that that number would increase by 20 per cent yearly.
Dr Anderson said thousands of people have probably eaten meat from infected deer in Wisconsin.
Dr Raina Plowright, a disease ecologist at Cornell University, told The Guardian that CWD should be viewed in the context of disease outbreaks occurring in agricultural environments, where contact with disease-carrying animals is increasing.
It comes after UK health chiefs warned in October that they’re tracking four new ‘zoonotic’ bugs – diseases that jump from animals to humans.