CWD alarm – 11/18/2006

  • November 25, 2013 at 1:53 pm #1337
    Mike
    Keymaster

    from bridget
    Hi All
    I know this site has been quiet, but I continue to believe this
    information will be quite telling.
    There are many bases to cover but try we must.
    Bridget
    Phoenix Arizona

    http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0%2C1299%
    2CDRMN_15_5046983%2C00.html

    Study sounds CWD alarm
    CSU scientists find disease can spread in deer saliva, blood
    By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News
    October 6, 2006

    Deer can spread chronic wasting disease through saliva and blood,
    which means no part of an infected animal can be considered safe to
    eat, Colorado researchers discovered.

    Up to now, there has been a widespread feeling that as long as the
    brain or lymph nodes were avoided, the rest of the deer was safe to
    eat.

    The results of the study led by Colorado State University scientists
    will be reported in today’s edition of Science.
    Some herds in Colorado have no cases of CWD, and others have very
    low incidence. But among some herds around Fort Collins and Rocky
    Mountain National Park, the infection rate is as high as 6 percent.
    And because deer with the disease, which causes them to stagger and
    lose weight, make themselves more frequent targets of hunters,
    chances can be quite good that the deer a hunter kills in an area
    with a high infection rate has CWD.

    The first of Colorado’s rifle seasons for deer and elk begins Oct.
    14.

    While there is no proof that humans can get CWD from eating the
    flesh of an infected deer, such cross-species transfer has been seen
    in a related prion-type illness – mad cow disease.
    Ed Hoover, CSU microbiology professor and principal scientist for
    the study, suggests that hunters pay strict attention to the advice
    from the Colorado Division of Wildlife: Don’t eat any part of a deer
    until its brain and lymph nodes have been tested for the presence of
    the abnormal prions that signal CWD.

    Hunters also should wear gloves when they dress an animal to guard
    against accidental infection.

    The finding that saliva can provide a pathway for the disease means
    CWD can spread easier than scientists previously thought, Hoover
    said.

    Grooming and nibbling are common social behavior among deer. A
    diseased deer may chew on the hair of a noninfected deer. Later,
    when the healthy deer grooms itself, it can get infected through the
    saliva on the hair.

    The CSU team used about a dozen deer that were kept indoors to
    ensure they couldn’t get CWD from any source but the variables used
    in the study.

    One group of deer were given the saliva of known infected deer to
    ingest. Parts of their tonsils were then clipped and tested for the
    presence of the abnormal prions that comprise CWD. Some had the
    disease in three months, others got it within a year.
    A second group injected with the blood of infected deer also
    developed the disease. That means, according to researchers, that
    CWD can spread throughout a deer’s body and throughout its flesh,
    albeit in smaller concentrations than in the brain and tonsils.

    It also means that CWD possibly could be transferred through the
    bite of a mosquito.

    Hoover’s group already has embarked on a follow-up study.
    In the hunt
    • The first of Colorado’s rifle seasons for deer and elk begins on
    Oct. 14.

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