Photo: Ivan MAKEEV
The disease that turns deer into zombies (or chronic wasting disease) is spreading in the United States and Canada at an alarming rate.
The magnitude of the epidemic of this neurological disease is alarming not only among specialists, but also among ordinary people.
Symptoms of CWD include increased salivation and a blank stare. Sick deer behave like zombies, moving slowly and slowly, but not paying attention to anything.
So far, this disease only affects deer, but scientists believe it is also potentially dangerous for humans.
It is already known that zombie deer disease is caused by misfolded prion proteins, which cause the degeneration of normal proteins in the brain. Prions do not provoke an immune response, which creates the main difficulty in identifying them.
There are still no documented cases of transmission of CWD from deer to humans, nor is there direct evidence that this epidemic is potentially threatening humans at this time. But research confirms that the prions that cause CWD can infect human cells.
For now, the ecosystems in which deer live are especially at risk, since their mass death is already affecting the number of species of other living organisms, as well as vegetation.
