Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a contagious neurological disease affecting deer and elk. It causes a characteristic spongy degeneration of the brains of infected animals resulting in emaciation, abnormal behavior, loss of bodily functions and death. The infectious agents are consider to be neither bacteria or virus but rather are thought to be prions. Prions are considered to be infectious proteins with out associated nucleic acids.

Distribution

The disease was long thought to be limited in the wild to a relatively small endemic area in northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyomingand southwestern Nebraska, but it has recently been found in new areas of these states, as well as in wild deer and elk in western South Dakota, and wild deer in northern Illinois, south-central New Mexico, northeastern and central Utah, south-central and south-eastern Wisconsin, central New York, north-east West Virginia, Kansasand west and south-central Saskatchewan.  Also, CWD positive moose has recently been discovered in the endemic area of Colorado.

The disease also has been diagnosed in commercial game farms in Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wisconsin, New York,  Saskatchewanand Alberta. The disease was confirmed on 8/25/2008 in a Kent County deer breeding facility in Michigan (see press release: Michigan's First Case of Chronic Wasting Disease Detected at Kent County Deer Breeding Facility ).

Click herefor a link to USDA-APHIS-Veterinary Services- United States CWD Current Distribution Maps webpage (will open in a new window)