Modeling routes of chronic wasting disease transmission: environmental prion persistence promotes deer population decline and extinction.

ABSTRACT: Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal disease of deer, elk, and moose transmitted through direct, animal-to-animal contact, and indirectly, via environmental contamination. Considerable attention has been paid to modeling direct transmission, but despite the fact that CWD prions can remain infectious in the environment for years, relatively little information exists about the potential effects of indirect transmission on CWD dynamics. In the present study, we use simulation models to demonstrate how indirect transmission and the duration of environmental prion persistence may affect epidemics of CWD and populations of North American deer. Existing data from Colorado, Wyoming, and Wisconsin's CWD epidemics were used to define plausible short-term outcomes and associated parameter spaces.

SUBMITTER: Almberg ES 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3094393 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature