Innovation Anthology #300:
The Alberta Government reports that 13 new cases of Chronic Wasting Disease were discovered during 2009. This brings the total to 74 infected deer since 2005.
One was an emaciated deer found last summer, and the rest were confirmed through the mandatory collection of deer heads from animals hunted along the Alberta-Saskatchewan border.
According to Alberta’s Wildife Disease Specialist, Dr. Margo Pybus, there’s no way to test for the chronic wasting disease in live animals.
DR. MARGO PYBUS: In deer, the first changes are detected in the lymph nodes at the back of the throat. And then as the disease progresses, you get the prion changes in the brain. Which also helps us estimate the time that that individual might have been infected. In that if the prions are only in the lymph nodes and not in the brain, for example, then that indicates a relatively recent or early infection, as opposed to an animal that’s got prions in the nodes and in the brain, its had it for that much longer,
Two of the new cases were detected the furthest west and south to date, marking an expansion of the range of CWD to the Red Deer River and south of Medicine Hat.
Thanks today to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Sponsor
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Program Date: 2010-03-23