CWD Vaccine? Bacteria? What?

[TOGIE]

I'm very confused by this article:

https://www.gohunt.com/read/news/a-vaccine-for-cwd#gs.r7SkhIU

CWD is not caused by bacteria, it's caused by prions. What am I missing here?

 

[grandejuan]

Prions are not bacteria or a virus. They can survive temps up into +400°F. I need to see a much more complete study before I get excited over any so called cure or vaccine. GJ

 

[TOGIE]

Prions are not bacteria or a virus. They can survive temps up into +400°F. I need to see a much more complete study before I get excited over any so called cure or vaccine. GJ

Right, this article just feels vague and uninformative. Not to mention, incorrect. But again, unless I'm missing something.

 

[Magnum Sherpa]

This researcher specializes in transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in humans and animals. His theory is that TSEs are caused by small bacteria lacking cell walls. I think he first isolated one called Spiroplasma during the autopsy of a patient who died from CJD in 1979. There is another researcher (I think at Yale) who believes CJD and other TSEs are caused by a yet unidentified virus. This is definitely an area of emerging research on this topic.

 

[406LIFE]

What should be of huge note for those who are more than marginally involved is that it is possible that a bacteria is what is the actual cause of the TSE. IF that were so, then there is much more knowledge and research on how to manage that. While it is still far from being the silver bullet, it should really cause us to sit up and maybe even to become cautiously optimistic.

 

[wyoboypt]

people have been unknowingly eating infected animals for years. But i have yet to hear of a person getting cwd. is it really important for hunters to test their harvests??

 

[ClearCreek]

Don't get your hopes up. This researcher has a theory that CWD is caused spiroplasma bacteria. So far he hasn't produced compelling evidence to support this theory so no CWD vaccine is likely to be produced anytime soon.

ClearCreek

 

[Eric Albus]

I think deer are way to tough and stubborn to go to the clinic for a shot when they are feeling a little under the weather.

 

[Gut Shot]

The farther you dig into the CWD issue the more you realize that the "experts" are dealing with a lot more theory and speculation than fact.

 

[archer wapiti]

Huh. Never heard about a link between a bacterium and prions before. Interesting that the LSU press release doesn't even mention prions.

 

[Hunting Wife]

I agree the article in the OP is more confusing than informative.

There have been hypotheses for decades about some as-yet-unidentified agent that somehow triggers the initial protein misfolding. Bacteria, viruses, plasmids, or some unknown type of organism new to science have all been floated as ideas, but to my knowledge no one has yet demonstrated any causal relationship between any of the above and TSEs. The last one I recall that caused some buzz was about 10 years ago (or maybe more now?) when someone thought they had found little rogue pieces of DNA floating around that induced misfolding to cause CWD but further work never bore that out. If someone were to actually identify some other causal agent, it could be a game changer. But since there doesn’t appear to be any strong evidence for that at this point, it seems awfully premature to be mentioning a vaccine.

 

[grandejuan]

Since the researcher "discovered" the Spiroplasma in 1979,what kind of new knowledge has been found in the ensuing 38 years. Apparently not much. GJ

 

[TOGIE]

people have been unknowingly eating infected animals for years. But i have yet to hear of a person getting cwd. is it really important for hunters to test their harvests??

Maybe most important just for research on the disease. No one has gotten sick, but all the researchers say they can't say it couldn't ever happen.

What we really need to be worried about is the long-term effects on some of our ungulates - CWD is a pretty serious problem when you start to think about it.

 

[npaden]

With Mad Cow disease hundreds of millions of people ate the infected meat. Infection rates were somewhere around 1 out of every 100,000 people that ate infected meat.

I'm not sure 100,000 people have eaten venison that was infected to get to the same % of infection rate.