Chronic wasting disease: Death of 2 hunters in US raises fear of 'zombie deer'
Two hunters who ate meat from deer known to have chronic wasting disease − or "zombie deer disease" − developed similar neurological conditions and died, raising concerns that it can pass from animals to humans.
Found in deer in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming in the 1990s, chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been recorded in free-ranging deer, elk and moose in at least 32 states across all parts of the continental U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Researchers identify troubling case involving 2 deaths
Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio have reported how two hunters who ate venison from a deer population known to have CWD died in 2022 after developing sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which is a neurological disease like CWD.The second man to die, who was 77, suffered "rapid-onset confusion and aggression," the researchers said, and died within a month despite treatment.
"The patient’s history, including a similar case in his social group, suggests a possible novel animal-to-human transmission of CWD," they wrote in the case report, presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, and published in peer-reviewed journal Neurology.
