A warning has been issues over 'zombie deer' disease that has been killing animals as people fear it could have spread to humans.
What is it about our obsession with zombies? Whether it be the slow shufflers of the George A. Romero days or the fast zombies of World War Z, Hollywood is constantly coming up with new ways to reinvent the genre.
28 Days Later came up with the clever idea of animal experiments spreading the 'Rage Virus', while The Last of Us video games and TV series adapted the real-life Cordyceps fungus that's known to turn some ants and tarantulas into 'zombies'. While Cordyceps isn't thought to pose an actual threat to us (fingers crossed), another real-life disease is grabbing headlines after we're warned it could 'jump' to humans.
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The 'zombie deer disease' is reported to be nearly 100% fatal to the animals, leaving them confused, drooling, and worryingly unafraid of humans. Although we've been told for years about the potential dangers of the disease, it's back in the news due to fears it could jump to humans. There's still much debate about whether chronic wasting disease (CWD) can leap to humans and evolve into a form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). In 2024, there were concerns surrounding the deaths of two hunters who regularly ate from a population of deer that were infected with CWD. Despite doctors deeming that both men died from CJD, they couldn't provide a definitive link to CWD.
According to Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases researcher at the University of Minnesota, the zombie deer disease has now been found in wild pigs that have eaten infected meat. Osterholm explained: "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?
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"What would that do to the swine market? What would that do to the cattle market? These are huge issues."
Funded by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the “Chronic Wasting Disease Spillover Preparedness and Response: Charting an Uncertain Future" report warns that even cooked pork and venison could still carry CWD. It can be contracted by saliva, feces, or blood of an infected animal, and as there are no vaccines or treatments, a jump to humans could be devastating.
The consumption of infectious proteins known as prions needs more research, with Osterholm adding: "We know that people are being exposed through consumption with prions. What we don’t yet understand is what would it take for that prion to actually infect that human with ingestion?”
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In 2022, the University of Calgary carried out an experimental study where they injected 'humanized' mice with CWD isolates and monitored them over 2.5 years. As a major red flag, the mice developed CWD and left infectious prion proteins in their droppings.
Now, Osterholm sats that there's relatively little data on how the strain is evolving, painting a grim picture of diagnosis: "How do we monitor for this in humans? How do we pick it up? Would a practicing physician in rural America seeing someone who has dementia think, ‘Well, it’s probably Alzheimer’s.’ Not recognizing it very well could be due to this prion. How do we do that kind of surveillance?"
Even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains that there have been no cases of CWD detected, that doesn't mean it won't happen in the future.
As pigs are known for having a similar genetic makeup to humans, there are obvious fears that we're next to face the perils of 'zombie deer disease' and a zombie apocalypse. Maybe Naughty Dog can weave it into the plot for the rumored The Last of Us Part III.