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A comment on Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada.

Re:Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada by anthony_romeo on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @10:46AM (#27050516)
In other Prion news, there's a prion disease, Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), affecting populations of wild Deer, Elk, etc. in North America and other chunks of the world. It's not yet known to infect people, but please be careful when eating wild game. [1]

My mind first went to this issue when I read the headline, though upon reading the article it's probably something else, as CWD isn't really a thing in that region [it's more of a Mountain state kind of thing thing]. And, of course, I'm not a prion expert, so I only vaguely know what I'm writing about.

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutriti...

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Re:Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada by eganp on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @03:35PM (#27054595)
The species barrier in prion transmission appear very strong [0]. Transmitting a prion from a hamster into a mouse often takes multiple passages of direct in brain inoculation. In these closely related species, perhaps it's less strong. It's doubtful that CWD can transmit to humans at typical exposure levels. In vitro, conversion of human PrP is possible, but exceedingly difficult.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2736662/ [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5667731/

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Re:Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada by loonster on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @02:18PM (#27053621)
CWD is in 25 states now. Some of them have cattle.

https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/occurrence.html

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