Numerous headlines last month featured the term ‘zombie deer’. What was it actually about?
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been observed in deer and elk since the 1960s, particularly in the USA. This prion disease is similar to mad cow disease (BSE) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. Affected animals lose their shyness towards humans, show coordination disorders, heavy salivation and rapid weight loss. These symptoms have led to the media often referring to the affected animals as ‘zombie deer’.
An incident in 2022, published in Neurology in April this year, reignited the debate about the possible transmission of CWD to humans: a 72-year-old hunter showed rapidly progressive confusion and aggression after eating meat from infected deer. A friend who had also eaten this meat had died of CJD shortly before. Despite intensive treatment, the hunter died and post-mortem examinations confirmed sporadic CJD.
Scientists have now commented on the latest death in the USA that although the diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was confirmed post-mortem, the prion proteins were so similar that CWD could not be ruled out. The German Friedrich Löffler Institute (FLI) considers the theory that the hunters contracted CWD to be not only unproven, but also rather implausible.
So the idea that we are actually threatened by zombies (even if only in deer form) is fortunately a horror film fantasy induced by headlines at best. Incidentally, there is a recent publication in Science on the topic of the consequences of ‘clickbaiting’ headlines in social media:
Allen, Jennifer et al. Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook. Science vol. 384,6699 (2024) DOI: 10.1126/science.adk3451