The United States is overrun with zombie deer stricken with a deadly disease. It is not yet known whether it can be transmitted to humans, but the infection turned out to be infectious for monkeys. Experts advise against eating deer and elk meat and staying away from strange behaving animals.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns that zombie deer infected with a deadly disease are roaming 24 US states and two Canadian provinces. It was reported by the CNN news service.
Chronic wasting disease is a contagious spongiform encephalopathy that affects black-tailed deer, white-tailed deer, elk, elk, and reindeer. The disease is caused by prions - infectious agents with abnormal tertiary structure and lack of nucleic acids. The disease is almost always fatal and leads to degradation of mental and physical abilities with the formation of a huge number of holes in the cerebral cortex, and therefore the brain under a microscope resembles a sponge when opened.
"Prions eat holes in the brains of animals, turning them into zombies," said Dale Garner, head of the Iowa Natural Resources Administration's Wildlife Department. - Reindeer lose all fear of people, their salivation increases. There is no cure for the disease."
The disease was first discovered in 1967 in black-tailed deer in northern Colorado. Initially, the researchers decided that the cause of the animal's condition was exhaustion, but later the prion nature of the disease became clear.
In the United States, chronic wasting disease affects between 7,000 and 16,000 animals a year.
It takes about a year from infection to death. The first signs of the disease are difficulty in movement. Over time, weight loss occurs, sick animals interact less with the rest, lower their heads, tremble, become nervous and aggressive, and stop being afraid of people. They begin to drink more, which is why they urinate more often, salivation increases, which contributes to the spread of the disease.
“This is a disease that cannot be cured,” Garner says. - There is no medicine yet. Therefore, if there are deer on the territory, the disease will spread between them."
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There have been no cases of human infection yet. However, some experts do not consider the disease to be completely safe for humans. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, warns that the disease is similar to mad cow disease that can be transmitted to humans.
“In my professional opinion, based on public health experience, human infections from eating meat from sick animals may well be reported in the coming years,” he says. "And it is possible that these will not be isolated, but massive events."
In addition, studies have shown that the disease can be transmitted to other animals, including primates. In the course of laboratory experiments, it turned out that saimiri monkeys, macaques and mice with human genes, which ate the meat and brains of deer and elk infected with prions, are susceptible to infection. Including the meat of elk and deer, in which the symptoms of the disease have not yet appeared, turned out to be infectious.
"It is likely that the territories where the disease is widespread will expand," CDC experts say.
Prions are especially dangerous for their vitality - they can survive for years in the wild, in soil, tree roots, and even on rocks.
A number of questions remain unanswered so far. How exactly do deer become infected - through saliva, feces, food, soil? How many prions must enter the animal's body to cause disease? And what about food processing equipment that has gotten sick deer meat?
"We don't have tests for that," says Jeremy Schaeffers, a diagnostic lab specialist. The disease can only be detected by examining the animal's brain and some other organs, and this can take several days.
“Bringing a sick deer to a meat processing plant will be the worst nightmare,” Osterholm notes.
To reduce the risk of infection, experts recommend not to hunt deer and elk that look sick or behave strangely, and also not to touch animals that have been hit on the road.
“Until we figure out how to deal with the disease, we want to at least control its spread,” explains Garner.
Already, in some areas, rules are in place to reduce the risk of human infection. For example, in North Carolina, anyone transporting a deer carcass must follow strict packaging guidelines. In addition, hunters are strongly advised to call a specialist for analysis before eating meat from killed moose or deer, even if the animal looks healthy.
Alla Salkova