What is Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD)? and Where has it been found?

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 

Where has CWD been found?  Click for a map 

The disease also has been diagnosed in commercial game farms in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Wisconsin,  Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada and in an elk herd in Korea. In Michigan, the disease was confirmed on 8/25/2008 in a Kent County deer breeding facility.

The disease was long thought to be limited in the wild to a relatively small endemic area in northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming and 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, Virginia, north-east West Virginia, Kansas, and west and south-central Saskatchewan. Also, a CWD-positive moose has recently been discovered in the endemic area of Colorado. And more recently, Minnesota, Maryland, North Dakota, Missouri, western Texas, and Alberta have been added to the list of states or provinces where the disease has been found in wild deer.

Occurrence of CWD in Wildlife:

Where was the CWD deer in Michigan?
On August 25, 2008, CWD was confirmed in a captive 3-year-old white-tailed doe from a privately-owned cervid facility in Kent County. The owner sent the culled deer to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) for required testing.