Asymptomatic deer excrete infectious prions in faeces

Gültekin Tamgüney, Michael W. Miller, Lisa L. Wolfe, Tracey M. Sirochman, David V. Glidden, Christina Palmer, Azucena Lemus, Stephen J. DeArmond and Stanley B. Prusiner ()
Additional contact information
Gültekin Tamgüney: Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases,
Michael W. Miller: Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, Colorado, 80526 USA
Lisa L. Wolfe: Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, Colorado, 80526 USA
Tracey M. Sirochman: Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, Colorado, 80526 USA
David V. Glidden: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics,
Christina Palmer: Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases,
Azucena Lemus: University of California, San Francisco, California, 94143 USA
Stephen J. DeArmond: Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases,
Stanley B. Prusiner: Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases,

Nature, 2009, vol. 461, issue 7263, 529-532

Abstract: Prion disease transmission Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a highly contagious prion disease that causes neurodegeneration in several species in the deer family, including the elk and moose. The precise mechanisms of natural CWD transmission are unresolved. It is known that once an animal shows signs of the disease, its excretions can contain contagious prions. Stanley Prusiner and colleagues show that mule deer infected with CWD begin to excrete infectious prions in faeces long before they develop visible signs of the disease. This suggests a plausible, natural mechanism that could explain the high incidence and efficient horizontal transmission of CWD among deer — and may also be relevant for the similarly contagious scrapie in sheep.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08289 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:461:y:2009:i:7263:d:10.1038_nature08289

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature08289

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().