What will happen to people when they eat 'zombie deer' meat?

by Tim ten Cate

" CWD (chronic wasting disease) " that strikes a deer such as deer, reindeer and caribou centering on North America is " prion disease " similar to BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) which became a big problem in the 2000s. There should be no one dare to eat the deer meat infected with CWD, but in the past, in the United States there was a case that the meat served at the banquet was of a deer infected with CWD, tracking the health condition of the person who ate The investigated report exists.

Six-year follow-up of a point-source exposure to CWD contaminated venison in an upstate New York community: risk behaviors and health outcomes 200 ... - PubMed - NCBI
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25225155

Zombie deer disease: What happened to 200 people who ate CWD meat
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/02/21/zombie-deer-disease-what-happened-people-ate-cwd-meat/2926840002/

As BSE is called "mad cow disease", CWD is sometimes called "frenzy" or "zombie deer disease". Although deer really does not become a zombie, when infected, change first appears in the way of walking. Subsequently, I became indifferent to my surroundings and lived an isolated life, and my weight decreased. Symptoms such as trembling, walking around the same place, becoming nervous hypersensitivity appear. The amount of saliva, the number of bruxism, the amount of drinking water and the number of urination increased. In the end, it is said that aspiration pneumonia caused by increased saliva and hunger cause death.

For the first time CWD was reported in 1967 as a case of Mulejka in the accommodation facility in Colorado state. From abnormal symptoms, I knew that it was an unknown disease, but it took me more than 10 years to find it to be a type of prion disease. Meanwhile, similar symptoms were found in wild individuals, and by January 2019 infection cases were confirmed in 24 states / 251 counties in the United States.

Occurrence | Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) | Prion Disease | CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/occurrence.html

A valuable case on the possibility of human infection is the event that occurred in 2005, "The meat of a deer in a banquet was a deer infected with CWD". The banquet was planned by the fire fighters in Oneneida County, New York State, and it was found in a later investigation that the meat was of an infected deer.

In Onewida County CWD surveillance project, 81 people from the meat eaters cooperated and conducted a follow-up survey for 6 years from 2005 to 2011. As a result, although it was found that the deceased meat consumption of the cooperator decreased in 6 years, there was no one who raised a remarkable change in the health condition, there were no visual acuity reduction, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, weight change, hypertension, arthritis It was concluded that it was due to aging.

However, in the research on "Possibility of CWD infection" conducted since 2009, funded by the University of Calgary University Alberta Prion Research Institute, macaques 5 given CWD infected meat of meadow for 3 years I know that three of my heads have become positive for CWD.

by Olivier Guillard

This project, led by Stefanie Czub, a prion researcher at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, is conducting research using 18 macaques. In addition to the above cases, macaques injected into the brain by CWD prions are also used for CWD He said he was infected.

Macaque study heightens concerns about human susceptibility to CWD
https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/columnists/paul-smith/2017/06/28/macaque-study-heightens-concerns-human-susceptibility-cwd/430046001/

It is pointed out that humans are likely to be infected with CWD in the future as there is no case where CWD infected humans at the present time, but it is known that primates close to humans are infected compared to deer It is.