Are prion diseases transmissible to humans?
Although there is considerable ongoing research on this issue, there is no confirmed human neurologic disease linked to CWD at this time. In addition, there have never been any indications of human illness related to scrapie, a prion disease found in sheep. However, ingestion of cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) overseas appears to be related to human deaths from a new variant of a previously identified neurologic disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).
