Abstract
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) affects cervids and is the only known prion disease to affect free-ranging wildlife populations. CWD spread continues unabated, and exact mechanisms of its seemingly facile spread among deer and elk across landscapes in North America remain elusive. Here we confirm that naturally contaminated soil contains infectious CWD prions that can be transmitted to susceptible model organisms. We show that smectite clay content of soil potentiates prion binding capacity of different soil types from CWD endemic and non-endemic areas, likely contributing to environmental stability of bound prions. The smectite clay montmorillonite (Mte) increased prion retention and bioavailability in vivo. Trafficking experiments in live animals fed bound and unbound prions showed that mice retained significantly more Mte-bound than unbound prions. Mte promoted rapid uptake of prions from the stomach to the intestines via enterocytes and M cells, and then to macrophages and eventually CD21+ B cells in Peyer's patches and spleens. These results confirm clay components in soil as an important vector in CWD transmission at both environmental and organismal levels.
Highlights
Chronic Wasting Disease is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), or prion disease, that affects cervid species including elk (Cervis elaphus nelsoni), mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), white-tailed deer (O. virginianus), moose (Alces alces spp.) and reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus)
We report that chronic exposure to naturally contaminated soil is sufficient for Chronic wasting disease (CWD) transmission in prion susceptible mice
For the first time, that soil from pens that previously housed prion infected animals transmitted CWD prions to susceptible transgenic mice bred in prion-free conditions
Summary
Chronic Wasting Disease is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), or prion disease, that affects cervid species including elk (Cervis elaphus nelsoni), mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), white-tailed deer (O. virginianus), moose (Alces alces spp.) and reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus). CWD has been horizontally transmitted directly between animals (Miller and Williams, 2003), through excreta (Mathiason et al, 2006), and through indirect transmission from contaminated environments and fomites (Georgsson et al, 2006; Mathiason et al, 2009). This is similar to scrapie, a prion disease of sheep. Both diseases appear to be lymphotropic, orally transmissible, and environmentally stable (Georgsson et al, 2006; Michel et al, 2012b). Mule deer consume between 7 and 30 g of soil/day (Arthur and Alldredge, 1979), creating a probable link in the indirect CWD transmission cycle
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