Infectious prion proteins, those nasty little things that cause mad cow disease, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease and chronic wasting disease have been found to jump from one species to another and in so doing causes a new infectious form of the protein. This is good and bad news I would think. Good in that science is one step closer to understanding the disease of chronic wasting disease and bad because new questions arise in whether or not CWD can be transmitted to humans.
We know that mad cow disease has transmitted to humans but there is currently no evidence to suggest that animals infected with chronic wasting disease can infect humans.
Chronic wasting disease has shown up in deer, elk and moose in several states and we really have yet to get a firm understanding of whether the disease occurs naturally or the exact method of transmission. We do know it’s extremely difficult to sanitize infected areas, especially in the soil.
Generally, prions are limited to a specific host and a few related species. But prions sometimes cross the species barrier to infect new hosts. Notably, prions from cows have hopped to humans, causing disease in 208 people, mostly in the UK. Now, scientists wonder if the prion-induced chronic wasting disease (CWD), which afflicts elk and deer in the US, could jump to humans. Since prion diseases have long dormant periods, the fact that there are no human cases of CWD doesn’t necessarily indicate that people won’t develop symptoms in the future.
Studies are now underway to see if normal prion protein from humans can be infected with deer protein.
Tom Remington
