Elk afflicted with chronic wasting disease
Poor elk.
Posted on 03/31/2005 8:38:45 PM PST by neverdem
A case of chronic wasting disease, which affects the brain and nervous system in deer and elk, has been detected for the first time in New York, according to the State Department of Agriculture and Markets.
Scientists have not found evidence that animals can transmit the disease to humans, but more research must be done to determine with certainty that there is no risk to people, said Dr. Byron Caughey, a senior investigator at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, a part of the National Institutes of Health, where the disease is being studied.
Chronic wasting disease is characterized by weight loss, excessive salivation and, in some cases, head tremors. It is always fatal.
First identified in the 1970's, the disease has since been found in wild and captive deer and elk in regions of Colorado and Wyoming, where it is now endemic. In the past five years, infected animals have been identified over a growing geographic area, including Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico, as well as two provinces in Canada, according to a research paper published by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Chronic wasting disease is in the same class of disease as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (B.S.E.), better known as mad cow disease.
A form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, first appeared in humans in England after people ate meat from infected cattle.
The leading scientific theory is that Creutzfeldt-Jakob, like B.S.E. and chronic wasting disease, is caused by a malformed protein - called a prion - in the brain.
Only a few known prion diseases afflict humans, and all are fatal.
The human cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease revealed that the species barrier might not always protect humans from animal prion diseases, but much about the diseases remains unknown.
"We have learned a lot about these diseases in general terms," Dr. Caughey said. "But there are some very fundamental things we don't understand." Researchers are trying to determine if chronic wasting disease can be transmitted from deer and elk to monkeys, but the results may not be known for some time because the incubation period for the disease can be years, Dr. Caughey said.
There are no federal regulations governing how states must deal with sick animals. Many states, worried about the spread of chronic wasting disease, are setting up programs in which animals are randomly killed and tested, Dr. Caughey said. Such a program yielded the New York case, in which a captive white-tailed deer was slaughtered and tested on March 9. The deer had not shown any signs of illness, a spokeswoman for the state agriculture department, Jessica Chittenden, said. Tests done by state laboratories were confirmed by the United States Department of Agriculture on Wednesday.
They must have wandered into Manhattan.
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Moose (no, really!) suffer from similar diseases, don't they?
I suppose now that they'll starve the deer to death....because "that's what the deer said it wanted!"
Poor elk.
I really thought it was about the NY Libs at first!
Poor animals.
Guess they're worried they might wander into the Central Park Zoo. I would have thought researchers would be more worried about transmission to humans, but we all know that the value of an animal life is higher than a human life.
(Old Woody Allen routine).
It's either through Canada or Pennsylvania, making the latter as well as Ohio and Indiana worry.
Yes they have, just look at all the liberals that continue to elect silver..That's proof enough for me!
Hopefully it won't spread any further.
I haven't heard about any cases of moose with CWD.
Well, deer have been spotted in the Bronx (Pelham Bay Park). Who knows?
Do you know if, like with e. coli bacteria, sufficient cooking time/temp makes the meat safe to eat? (I'm not advocating eating one of the obviously "wasted" animals. I'm concerned about hunters who have an animal butchered. I don't think there is any type of routine test being done to rule out the disease before any meat is processed.)
At least those worms are understood. No one has a good understanding of spongiform encephalopathies with these prions, which are supposed to be misfolded proteins caused by eating something containing other prions, as I understand it. Deer and elk are herbivores. Are they eating contaminated feed of domestic critters?
Have you seen this?
I'm not aware of any. What they know about these wasting diseases with prions is very little.
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