Deer first suspected of infecting humans with deadly 'zombie virus'
Two cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in hunters have been described in the USA. Presumably, the men became infected after eating meat from deer affected by the chronic debilitating disease, or "zombie virus".
Staff at the Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine in San Antonio, Texas, published a small report in the journal Neurology. The article deals with two American hunters with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a rare and rapidly progressive neurodegenerative disease from the prion group. These are incurable and fatal brain lesions associated with infectious proteins (prions).
In 2022, a 72-year-old man went to the medics with complaints of confusion - a pathological condition caused by impaired mental processes - and aggression. It turned out that earlier he had eaten the meat of a deer caught on the hunt, suffering from a chronic debilitating disease. Moreover, a friend of this patient, who had also eaten meat from animals from the same population, had previously died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
"Despite active symptomatic treatment, the patient's condition worsened, and he died one month after first contact. The diagnosis was confirmed posthumously: 'sporadic CJD with homozygous amino acid methionine encoded by codon 129 (sCJDMM1)'," the medics noted."
A codon is a triplet of nucleotide residues in DNA or RNA that encodes the inclusion of a single amino acid. In the described case, we are talking about the codon that encodes the amino acid methionine. This is an important, essential amino acid - normally it is not synthesised by the human body, but comes from food (but this does not apply to deer).
According to the researchers, the case history of the 72-year-old hunter and a similar case in his acquaintance allow us to assume that the transmission of chronic debilitating disease from animals to humans is still possible. However, because it is difficult to distinguish between "sporadic BCN with homozygous amino acid methionine encoded by codon 129" and "zombie deer" disease without detailed analysis of the infectious pathogen itself - a prion - the conclusions are tentative.
"Although a causal relationship remains unproven, the cases described demonstrate how important it is to continue to investigate the potential risks of eating deer with chronic wasting disease," the report's authors warned.
What is chronic wasting disease, or "zombie deer" disease
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a type of prion disease that affects wildlife, including deer. It is caused by proteins with abnormal structures (prions) that cause normal proteins in the brain to start folding incorrectly. Why this happens is still not clear.