Deer a possible source of "mad cow like" disease

A University of Kentucky researcher has warned that eating deer could put people at risk of a disease similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) commonly known as mad cow disease.

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), and has been found in deer and elk across the U.S. west and midwest and in parts of Canada.

It is unclear how it spreads.

The researchers say the muscles of deer affected by a mad cow-like disease carry the infectious prions that spread the illness, which means that venison could potentially spread the agent to humans.

They say leg muscle tissue taken from mule deer with chronic wasting disease (CWD) infected specially bred mice when they were injected with the tissue, and although this is not saying that the venison was infectious, researcher Glenn Telling of the University of Kentucky says the study shows it could be.

Telling has apparently voiced a reluctance on his part, following the study, to eat venison from areas where chronic wasting disease is endemic.

Chronic wasting disease is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), and belongs to a family of diseases that includes scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in people.

This insidious disease gradually destroy the brain and is always fatal and is caused by misshapen nervous system proteins called prions.

Despite a lack of evidence that people can catch CWD, following the BSE outbreak in British cattle herds in the 1980s, people became victims of a version of CJD called vCJD, and it has been linked to eating infected beef.

To date in the UK 153 people have died from highly probable or confirmed vCJD and six suspected vCJD patients are still alive.

Veterinary experts have already advised people to use caution when handling deer or elk that may have been infected with CWD.

Although the muscle meat of cattle generally has not been found to carry prions, their brains and certain organs do.

Telling warns that it is difficult to predict how prions will behave when they cross species barriers.

The report is published in the current issue of the journal Science.