Fatal Brain-Eating Prion Disease is Spreading from Deer Meat 

Fatal Brain-Eating Prion Disease is Spreading from Deer Meat. Credit | Getty Images
Fatal Brain-Eating Prion Disease is Spreading from Deer Meat. Credit | Getty Images

United States: Earlier this year, a team of scientists garnered a wave of media attention with their provocative report. They alleged that they discovered two instances of a very dangerous, always fatal prion disease among hunters that could have contracted the disease from eating contaminated deer meat—a phenomenon reminiscent of the mad cow crises over three decades ago. 

However, common opinion shared by many scholars does not concur with this view and recent findings argue that such a concept may not exist at all – at least not yet. 

The report was presented at the American Journal of Neurology by the researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio during early April. 

Fatal Brain-Eating Prion Disease is Spreading from Deer Meat. Credit | Freepik
Fatal Brain-Eating Prion Disease is Spreading from Deer Meat. Credit | Freepik

Cases of prion disease 

They had come across a story of a man who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD, the most frequent but still very uncommon prion disease in humans, according to the data 2022. 

In the report, it was found that the man had a friend at the same hunting lodge, who had himself been diagnosed with CJD before he died. Both men had reportedly consumed venison derived from the same group of deer, in which cases of chronic wasting disease (CWD) have previously been detected, as gizmodo.com reported. 

This disease most often comes in the form of CJD, CWD, as well as other diseases that are associated with the prion protein, which is normally harmless but is triggered by a misfolded version of the protein. 

Fatal Brain-Eating Prion Disease is Spreading from Deer Meat. Credit | WireImage
Fatal Brain-Eating Prion Disease is Spreading from Deer Meat. Credit | WireImage

When a bad prion encounters its normal counterpart, it must steer it into assuming another bad shape for some reason. Slowly and surely, this ‘zombie-like’ formation of diseased prions ultimately leads to the death of brain neurons ‘from within,’ albeit at a pace that may range from several years to decades before clinical manifestations such as dementia appear. However, when they make an appearance, death is the next thing that comes knocking. 

Vulnerability of mammals to prion disease 

All in all, the vulnerability of mammals to prion diseases arises out of various circumstances that are characterized by changes in the occurrence of these bad prions, which genetic mutations make virtually unavoidable. 

However, it was also found that on some occasions, prions can also travel from one person to another (it is in this way that prion disease called kuru spreads) or even from one species of animal to a different one, as gizmodo.com reported. 

Describing the relations between natural and artificial transgenes in the 1980s, it became clear that cows could catch the bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease from prions, possibly from prion-containing sheep. Later on, after several years of research, they discovered that people could actually be infected with a variant form of the disease through the consumption of meat from mad cows. 

It is true that, through enhancing food safety practices, the mad cow disease epidemic and consequently vCJD (the variant form) incidents were finally contained. 

Yet, CWD in deer, which was diagnosed in the 1960s, may have become a bigger issue over the years after the disease was found to be expanding throughout the extent and breadth of deer in North America. 

Similarly, the researchers from UT Health San Antonio claimed that a similar sequence of events might have occurred to the two hunters who received the vaccine. 

The research team wrote, “The patient’s history, including a similar case in his social group, suggests a possible novel animal-to-human transmission of CWD,” while urging for more research in order to investigate the said possibility.