Ticks may be able to spread chronic wasting disease between Wisconsin
deer

Date:
July 7, 2023
Source:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Summary:
A new study finds that ticks can harbor transmissible amounts of
the protein particle that causes Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD),
implicating the parasites as possible agents in the disease's
spread between deer in Wisconsin.


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FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A new study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
finds that ticks can harbor transmissible amounts of the protein particle
that causes Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), implicating the parasites as possible agents in the disease's spread between deer in Wisconsin. Her
findings were published in the journal Scientific reports,a Nature
journal.

CWD is caused by a pathogenic agent called a prion, which can pass from
deer- to-deer through contact with things like prion-contaminated soil
and infected bodily fluids such as urine, saliva, blood and feces. Prions, which cause disease in animals and in humans, prompt certain proteins to
fold abnormally, particularly in the brain, and prevent these proteins
from carrying out their normal functions. Over time, the CWD prion can
cause severe brain damage and eventually death in deer.

A lot of CWD studies focus on the role soil plays in spreading the fatal neurological disease among deer. But Heather Inzalaco, a researcher
in the Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, housed in the
UW-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, was curious about
other potential environmental and behavioral means of transmission.

"Deer live these secret lives; we don't see everything that they do,"
Inzalaco says.

She started to consider what sort of things pester deer that could be
connected to CWD: Ticks were the perfect parasitic potential culprit
to investigate.

Ticks have a goal, of course, to feed on their host's blood. Inzalaco
began to wonder if ticks that acquire blood from CWD-infected deer
could also host the prions and if so, could they contain enough prions
to spread the disease.

The question became even more intriguing when she discovered that the most common non-aggressive social behavior that deer engage in is allogrooming.

"Deer will groom one another to get places that they can't reach on their
own through self-grooming," Inzalaco says. "If they're grooming each
other and they're doing that to remove ectoparasites [such as ticks], that might be problematic because they're probably eating the ectoparasites."
First, she needed to show that ticks can take up and harbor these prions
when they feed on CWD-infected blood. She designed an experiment to do
just that.

"You'd think that it'd be easy to get ticks to take a blood meal, but
they are surprisingly fussy in the lab," Inzalaco says.

She was able to determine that ticks can not only carry the prions in
their blood meal, they can also carry enough of the agent to potentially
infect another animal with CWD. After seeing that the phenomenon was
possible in the lab, it was time to see what was happening in the wild.

Inzalaco partnered with the Department of Natural Resources to study
ticks collected from deer that hunters harvested and submitted for CWD
testing. Of the 176 deer with ticks she studied, 15 of the deer were
also positive for CWD.

Inzalaco took the ticks from the infected deer and tested the blood they contained to quantify the amount of prion the ticks harbored.

She determined that these engorged, wild ticks did carry transmissible
levels of prions -- just like those in the lab -- making them potential mechanical vectors for the disease.

"They're just like a little CWD tic-tac that are possibly being eaten
by the deer," Inzalaco says.

The study did not test whether prion-carrying ticks did cause transmission
to other deer.

Understanding more about how CWD can spread can help improve the
management of the disease. While it isn't practical to treat all wild
deer with tick preventatives, Inzalaco believes better land stewardship
could help manage tick populations.

For instance, having contiguous habitat of native plant communities and properly managing areas to continue a natural fire regime has been shown
to limit tick populations, she says, while more fragmented, unbalanced ecosystems riddled with invasive plants may allow ticks to proliferate
more readily.

Inzalaco says it might be possible to use ticks as a way to screen for CWD
in both wild and farmed deer. Current methods of diagnosis or screening
involve invasive sample collection from animals or tissue sampling after
their death.

While testing the ticks from deer may not lead to the same level of
accuracy as testing tissue samples, it could still be a useful tool to
better understanding where the disease is affecting deer population in
the state.

Inzalaco also believes her research can help improve the ecosystems that everyone relies on, especially the state's hunters.

"We are all inextricably linked to ecosystem function and the biodiversity
of those ecosystems," she says. "That is really what drives my desire
to learn and do good science on a daily basis. We need to make an effort
to preserve our natural heritage so that we can continue living on this
planet and not be overtaken by disease and have healthy animals and
healthy functioning ecosystems."
* RELATED_TOPICS
o Plants_&_Animals
# Spiders_and_Ticks # Prions # Animals # Wild_Animals
o Earth_&_Climate
# Ecology # Ecosystems # Rainforests # Exotic_Species
* RELATED_TERMS
o Prion o Tularemia o Tick o Rocky_Mountain_spotted_fever o
Malaria o Virus o Soy_protein o Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy

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provided by University_of_Wisconsin-Madison. Original written by Elise
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========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Inzalaco, H.N., Bravo-Risi, F., Morales, R. et al. icks harbor and
excrete chronic wasting disease prions. Sci Rep, 2023 DOI: 10.1038/
s41598-023-34308-3 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230707153844.htm

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