A ‘zombie deer’ disease that is fatal to every animal it infects could soon spill over into humans — if it hasn’t already, according to an alarming new report.
Experts have been warning for years that the nearly 100 percent fatal chronic wasting disease (CWD) —which leaves deer confused, drooling, and unafraid of humans — could jump from animals to people.
The disease has now been found in wild pigs that eat infected meat, with researchers warning it is steps away from spreading to domestic pigs — and then humans.
Dr Michael Osterholm, a top infectious diseases researcher at the University of Minnesota, warned: ‘We have some limited data now suggesting that feral pigs might be infected.
‘If they can get infected, surely it’s possible domestic swine could also become infected? What would that do to the swine market? What would that do to the cattle market? These are huge issues.’
In the report funded by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, experts also warn the disease could spread to humans via infected deer that are caught by hunters.
Both pork and venison are normally cooked before consumption, but researchers say this would not stop someone from catching CWD — because cooking only concentrates the misfolded proteins behind the disease.
CWD is incurable, with no vaccines or treatments available for humans. Someone can catch the disease just via contact with the saliva, feces or blood of an infected animal.
Experts are raising concerns over the potential for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) to spread to humans
The above map shows all the counties where CWD has been detected in deer up to August 2024
Speaking to local news in Minnesota, Dr Osterholm added: ‘We know that people are being exposed [to CWD] through consumption [of meat] with prions.
‘What we don’t understand yet is what would it take for that prion to actually infect that human with ingestion.’
Dr Osterholm gave the statements to raise awareness over the disease and the potential risk it poses to humans.
In the report, experts — who spent two years working on the project — called for more funding for efforts to halt the disease’s spread.
They also warned that new strains of the disease could emerge, which would be more likely to infect humans.
About 6million deer are killed by hunters in the US every year, estimates suggest, while 1.5billion pigs are also consumed annually.
It is not clear how many cases of CWD are detected every year, but the disease has now been found in at least 33 states — including Wyoming, Wisconsin, Colorado and areas of Pennsylvania.
Concerns were raised in April last year that the disease had already spread to humans and been diagnosed as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).
But researchers later pushed back on this, saying that their work did not prove that the patients had in fact caught CWD.
The CDC says that no cases of CWD have been detected in humans to date, but add that this may be a possibility in the future.
CWD occurs when proteins normally in the brain and nervous system — called prions — misfold and start to cause others to misfold, creating a cascade effect that disrupts communication between cells and causes the disease.
Research shows the proteins can be transmitted between animals via saliva, blood, urine or feces from infected animals.
And some suggest it is possible to get infected from contaminated drinking water or soil.
There is no treatment or vaccine for CWD at present, and in deer it has a fatality rate of near 100 percent.
Researchers are typically concerned about diseases that infect pigs, saying these animals have similar cells to humans — raising the risk of them transmitting a disease to people.
Dr Osterholm has also previously raised concerns over the bird flu outbreak gripping the animal world, warning that if this spreads to pigs — and starts to spread between them — then it would also be more likely to spread to humans.
