8 ms·
Two hunters from the same lodge afflicted with sporadic CJD: is CWD to blame?
- personjerry 3y agoThe three scariest afflictions to me are: Cancer, Rabies, and Prions
- mikequinlan 3y agoNaegleria fowleri (aka brain-eating amoeba)
- threesevenths 3y agoIs there any significant chance of catching it without getting hot water from a freshwater source up your nose or being immunocompromised?
- mikequinlan 3y agoDeadly brain amoeba infects US tap water (2013) https://www.nbcnews.com/healthmain/deadly-brain-amoeba-infects-us-tap-water-first-time-8c11172643 https://www.nbcnews.com/healthmain/deadly-brain-amoeba-infec...
- hyperific 3y agoIt's on the rise as well (2022) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/21/brain-eating-amoeba-climate-crisis-naegleria-fowleri https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/21/brain-ea...
- matthewtse 3y agoI went wakeboarding in a freshwater lake a few years ago. On the first wipeout, my face smashed into the water, and it went very far up my nose. On getting up, I remembered "Naegleria fowleri", and wondered, hmmmm this might have killed me. Luckily no symptoms appeared over the next few days. I feel like wakeboarding should be banned in warm freshwaters.
- lettergram 3y agolol ban wakeboarding? Ah yes let’s ban fun because… > The risk of Naegleria fowleri infection is very low. There were 29 reported infections in the United States in the 10 years from 2013 to 2022, despite millions of recreational water exposures each year. By comparison, in the 10 years from 2011 to 2020, there were an estimated 4,012 unintentional drowning deaths each year in the United States. https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/naegleria/general.html https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/naegleria/general.html You’re 150x more likely to drown. And even that is exceedingly unlikely - like 0.05% or something per year.
- Zenzero 3y agoOK then add in all of the suspect bacterial or viral meningitis that was actually N fowleri because it's "so rare".
- brianpan 3y agoContact lenses and tap water will do it. From your eye, it can travel to your lungs or brain. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21560-acanthamoeba-keratitis https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21560-acantha...
- throwup238 3y agoVibrio vulnificus! (Flesh eating bacteria found in warm waters like Florida)
- robbiep 3y agoSorry to ruin your afternoon but ALS is the terror that slowly cripples
- klipt 3y ago...and MS But of all those listed, cancer is far and away the most common and thus most likely to kill you in practice.
- krastanov 3y agoI do not think that is true anymore about MS. For most cases it is pretty manageable these days.
- s5300 3y ago[dead]
- piloto_ciego 3y agoIt’s better than it would have been in the early 90s by a huge margin, but it’s not that great. It’s very scary.
- fho 3y agoIt's even technically guaranteed that you get cancer if get old enough. Not a biologist, but if I got that correctly, every time your body replicates your DNA a bit of the end is cut of. There is a section of "garbage" at the end, but once that is gone the "functional" parts of the DNA are cut of. Once that happens you are guaranteed to develop tumors sooner or later.
- tux3 3y agoThe "garbage" at the end protects against cancer. It prevents cells from multiplying uncontrollably (and accumulating mutations in the process) by shortening the fuse at each generation. There's a hierarchy with stem cells at the top that live long, rarely divide, and have few mutations, and the children of the children ... of their children at the bottom divide often, but have a short fuse and a limited lifetime, so they don't keep accumulating mutations as much
- wombatpm 3y agoHaving read Laurie Gannet’s The Coming Plauge the possibility of air transmissible Ebola is on my list after Prions.
- huytersd 3y agoIt kills too quickly. You would have to hole up for 10-20 days and the infection will wipe itself out.
- azinman2 3y agoPost Covid what do you think the chances are of that happening now?
- all2 3y agoOnce people started seeing folks disintegrate in public I don't think it would be too much of an issue. In fact, I'd bet people would willingly hole up so they didn't catch that new plague that causes you to rot from the inside out.
- huytersd 3y agoIrrelevant I think. This is going to be brutal and very visible. Good riddance to the denialists at that point.
- baxtr 3y agoAnyone who played this virus game on their phone knows how difficult it is to wipe out all of humanity! You have to have the optimal mix of lethality and spread velocity.
- ahazred8ta 3y agohttps://www.lauriegarrett.com/the-coming-plague https://www.lauriegarrett.com/the-coming-plague
- leptons 3y agoI sometimes ponder that if HIV were airborne, there would be very few people alive right now. It would have travelled far and wide and infected practically everyone before we even knew what was happening, and long before there were any real mitigations, and there still isn't really a cure. It's only a matter of time before nature invents a virus that will work around our defenses and spread silently and then wham, 90% of humanity is gone.
- kevinpet 3y agoI would agree, except that I just watched a How To Cook That episode featuring rat lung worms transmission from slugs.
- markdown 3y agoThat's treatable though. And easy to avoid if you just wash your veggies properly before eating them.
- anonzzzies 3y agoAh. There is so much more… luckily chances of getting anything terrible outside cancer (which you will get if you get to be old enough) are slim. And cancer at old age is usually slow and fighting with other stuff that will kill you faster; bad heart, bad blood vessels, dementia, slipping in the bathtub etc.
- huytersd 3y agoHIV is still very much a scary disease. Sure you can take pills that extend your life but your remaining years will be filled with dread for which opportunistic disease is going to get you. Edit: I was wrong about rabies.
- Zenzero 3y ago> Rabies isn’t really a risk. Nearly everyone is vaccinated Oh my this is very very very false. People are rarely vaccinated for rabies. Only high risk people such as veterinarians are vaccinated. People who are bitten can be given PEP, but the vast majority of people are completely unprotected against rabies. If you live in the US there absolutely are many areas that have rabies infected wildlife. Rabies is 10000x worse to get than HIV.
- matthewtse 3y agoWell, it's worse if you don't realize you got it. I'd rather be infected with rabies, and receive a vaccine/cure immediately, than be infected with HIV, which I'd need to deal with chronically for the rest of my life.
- sterlind 3y agoif you're exposed to HIV and take post-exposure prophylaxis quickly enough, you can avoid lifelong infection. the trick is realizing you need it, which is why PrEP (pre-exposure) can be a good idea if you're at risk.
- huytersd 3y agoHIV PEP is only about 80% effective, which is good but still a 1 in 5 chance of getting it.
- Gare 3y agoNot true - most people are not vaccinated against rabies. Vaccination should be done ASAP after suspected infection, it's still effective.
- manmal 3y agoWhat about COPD. Non-smokers can get it, too, eg from silica dust exposure (also other materials).
- throwaway_e66m 3y agoI've been saying this for years! Almost everyone I know scoffs, "bah, there's no known case of a human ever catching it!" To which I've said, "That's what they said about BSE, too! Do you want to win the lottery of having a disease named after you?" And the authorities have become very reluctant to do testing due to the expense -- I've got meat from multiple untested animals in the freezer.
- lazide 3y agoAlso, if they don’t test for it, it clearly doesn’t exist. :s
- brcmthrowaway 3y ago[dead]
- Sabinus 3y agoAnother good argument to reintroduce apex predators. Lyme and prion disease are nasty, and the US deer population is riddled with it.
- Faaak 3y agoSorry if this seems dumb, but how can apex fix cjd?
- smallnix 3y agoPerhaps what they meant was that CWD makes the infected animals more likely to be eaten. Then the apex would, over time, kill the affected subpopulation. Not sure that this was meant and if that even makes sense.
- graemep 3y agoKill and eat the sick, reducing the spread of the disease.
- washadjeffmad 3y agoCulling is vital to healthy populations and balanced ecosystems. Animals don't have medicine, so the sick or diseased amongst them can spread susceptibility to illness more readily, over time making groups more genetically or immunologically prone in a way that could lead to destabilization, become vectors for contamination (some cancers are contagious, like in dogs, and prions don't break down easily, making them true ecohazards), or end up as vectors as they contact other animal populations (HIV and swine flu were non-human origin). Predators also encourage migration of herds, so deer won't consume an environment to depletion, including crops. Predation is nature's free labor!
- CrimsonCape 3y agoThere's a study that showed mountain lion (puma) can eat and digest CWD infected deer meat resulting in > 95% removal of prions. Don't quote that number though, some googling should find the study.
- Reubend 3y ago
- burcs 3y agoWhat a shame, I used to hunt quite a bit but have all but stopped because I'd be covered in ticks each time. We've been told recently of deer infected with CWD found near my grandparents farm (where I hunt). So I don't see myself going out much at all anymore, never was a trophy hunter, I do really like the taste of venison.
- shoelessone 3y agoCan do what my dad does to mitigate risk. He has a dedicated outdoor freezer, only thing is to hold dead deer (BEFORE processing). Has the deer tested by a lab before processing. Then processes himself.
- washadjeffmad 3y agoMight be for the best. A family friend died not that many years ago after a seemingly sudden onset of progressive neurological deterioration. The decade before, he'd become much more religious, describing to me what he felt as "grace" - short, intense emotional periods where he saw the world like a newborn and was overcome with wonder. If only we'd realized. He was a lifelong deer hunter, lived in the woods for a few weeks every year, field dressing, butchering, and eating his kills the traditional way. Our area has CWD cases, and while he was going through it, I asked if he'd ever tested or been tested, and he said no, he'd been told it wasn't contagious to humans.
- renewiltord 3y agoIs there a reason we believed that other prion diseases won't transmit? BSE -> CJD is already established, right? Seems like our base-case belief should be that these transmit, but I don't know the field.
- Gare 3y agoIt is a known risk: > To date, there have been no reported cases of CWD infection in people. However, some animal studies suggest CWD poses a risk to certain types of non-human primates, like monkeys, that eat meat from CWD-infected animals or come in contact with brain or body fluids from infected deer or elk. These studies raise concerns that there may also be a risk to people. Since 1997, the World Health Organization has recommended that it is important to keep the agents of all known prion diseases from entering the human food chain. https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/index.html
- Temporary_31337 3y agoI did not realise monkeys eat meat. Which species is that?
- germinator 3y agoI don't think it's about believing one way or the other. Hunter ed warns you about this and recommends precautions. But also consider that millions of deer are hunted and consumed in the US every year, and that hunters don't seem to be developing prion diseases at an elevated rate. We know relatively little about prions, but it seems likely that humans are fairly resilient to this, perhaps except for some predisposed individuals. Genetic factors are suspected, but there's no smoking gun. Acquired vCJD is exceedingly rare too.
- khana 3y ago[dead]
- sandspar 3y agoAcronyms are a scourge. Neurology.com can get away with using acronyms, since they're talking to specialists. But people also use them when talking to a public who doesn't know what the fuck the letters refer to. It's sloppy.
- jrapdx3 3y agoI'm a medical professional and I read medical journals regularly. Abbreviations and acronyms are a scourge, a single article can have dozens of cryptic abbreviated names. There's a good chance some are used that I don't immediately recognize and decipher. Some journals print a list of the articles abbreviated forms along with the "long" form which is quite helpful. Of course, authors are supposed to given the long form and abbreviated form in parentheses. The trouble is in printed journals it can be difficult to find the first use of the abbreviation. Fortunately viewing articles in an electronic medium it's usually possible to do a search which is a real time-saver. Furthermore, an abbreviation can have multiple meanings, especially across disciplines. For example, PSA can stand for prostate specific antigen, pressure-sensitive adhesive, public service announcement and probably some others too. Anyway I try to be mindful of the ambiguity abbreviations can produce. By all means, spelling out the term(s) abbreviations refer to should be considered mandatory.
- marcle 3y ago"PSA" can also be probabilistic sensitivity analysis. I do health economic evaluations for prostate cancer screening -- which leads to interesting ambiguities:).
- bikenaga 3y agoYeah, sorry about "CJD" and "CWD" - it was hard to fit the title in with the Hacker News 80-character limit.
- throwaway_5753 3y agoIs there more to the article? All I see is one paragraph of results and one paragraph of conclusions. Would love some more details. Chronic wasting disease sounds ominous. Is it difficult to tell if a deer is infected or is this a mistake any hunter could make?
- psmirnov 3y agoIt is a published abstract from a conference, not a complete article. Journals don’t make it obvious but if you click on the link to view the issue you’ll see that the issue title refers to an annual meeting.
- exhilaration 3y agoHere's a different source https://www.fieldandstream.com/conservation/study-cwd-fatal-human-disease-link/ https://www.fieldandstream.com/conservation/study-cwd-fatal-...
- nightowl_games 3y agoYou have to take the deers head to a lab. The university where I live will test it for free.
- bikenaga 3y agoA couple of caveats about the article: First, there were only two cases. Second, the article notes: "Based on non-human primate and mouse models, cross-species transmission of CJD is plausible. Due to the challenge of distinguishing sCJDMM1 from CWD without detailed prion protein characterization, it is not possible to definitively rule out CWD in these cases." I'm not a biologist, so if someone knows more please correct me, but I read this to mean that they definitely found CJD in the patients but could not establish the presence of the CWD prion. So they say "is plausible" and "not possible to definitely rule out". In PA, CWD has been detected in a lot of areas (https://pagame.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/b3c0fd44cc5944ebbc2229ede897b2ae https://pagame.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/b3c0fd44cc594...) but the prevalence seems low: The dashboard is showing 102,933 CWD samples with 1857 cases of CWD detected. (It's not clear how representative this is, or how the samples were acquired.)
- nightowl_games 3y ago"only two cases" from the same hunters lodge is significant enough to warrant suspicion inuo the deer/human prion pathway. Two cases in the same location like that is actually significant. One case matters. Two really matter. Three and it's pretty serious.
- hungrigekatze 3y agoThere were 5882 cases of CJD between 2007 and 2020 in the United States (not specific to CWD though). Nonetheless, when I learned of that tally a few weeks ago I didn't expect the tally to be so high. Public health messaging had conveyed to me that CJD was an extremely rare occurrence in the US. A larger-than-expected percentage of people Dxed with CJD are elderly (mid-70s to mid-80s) women which leads me to wonder if medical equipment was used when delivering babies exposed many women? I wonder if their children (who were being delivered) were also infected? In deer the mother-offspring infection route's quite well studied, but I'm not well informed about the human offspring route. --- Full paper here (not free): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/article-abstract/2812784 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/article-abstr... The article in JAMA, above, has been summarized on this page: https://www.neurologyadvisor.com/topics/neurodegenerative-diseases/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-rising-us-older-women/ https://www.neurologyadvisor.com/topics/neurodegenerative-di... I'll paste the summary text below: The incidence of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) has risen considerably from 2007 to 2020, particularly among older women, according to a research letter published in JAMA Neurology. The progressive, universally fatal prion disease CJD has been stable in the United States (US) between 1979 to 2006. The most common subtype of CJD, sporadic CJD, tends to affect older individuals. As the global population ages, the epidemiology of CJD may be evolving. To evaluate recent trends in CJD in the US, the researchers sourced data for this cross-sectional study from the Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research multiple cause of death database. Death certificates between 2007 and 2020 for CJD were assessed for volume and decedent demographics. The incidence of CJD increased consistently between 2007 and 2020, in which there were 5882 total cases and 51.2% occurred among women. [article continues on the Neurology Advisor page]