Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a neurodegenerative disease, caused by a prion that affects cervids including deer, elk and moose. Until recently, CWD was an obscure illness that seemed to be found only in a small geographic area in northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. However, this disease has now been detected in wild and farmed cervids in many other U.S. states and Canada. Korea ...

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Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a unique transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), white-tailed deer (O. virginianus), and Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni). The natural history of CWD is incompletely understood, but it differs from scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) by virtue of its occurrence in nondomestic and free-ranging sp...

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a neurodegenerative disease caused by a prion that affects cervids including deer, elk and moose. At one time, CWD was an obscure illness that seemed to occur only in a small geographic area in northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. However, this disease is now found in wild and/or farmed cervids in many other states in the U.S., where it appears to be ...

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is the only known prion disease affecting free-ranging animals and has become a serious epidemic in North America. Although any case was reported from Europe, the spread of the disease to other continents and regions cannot be excluded, because the transmission of CWD is the most efficient among prion diseases. This article reviews the host range of CWD including e...

There are numerous situations in which it is important to determine whether a particular disease of interest is present in a free-ranging wildlife population. However adequate disease surveillance can be labor-intensive and expensive and thus there is substantial motivation to conduct it as efficiently as possible. Surveillance is often based on the assumption of a simple random sample, but thi...

Three White-tailed Deer shot within 5 km during the 2001 hunting season in Wisconsin tested positive for chronic wasting disease, a prion disease of cervids. Subsequent sampling within 18 km showed a 3% prevalence (n=476). This discovery represents an important range extension for chronic wasting disease into the eastern United States.

A high degree of uncertainty exists for chronic wasting disease (CWD) transmission factors in farmed and wild cervids. Evaluating the factors is important as it helps to inform future risk management strategies. Expert opinion is often used to assist decision making in a number of health, science, and technology domains where data may be sparse or missing. Using the "Classical Model" of elicita...