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A new report says in Rochester, NY., Hunter may have developed an ultra-rare brain infection after eating the brains of squirrels he killed, according to LiveScience.
The report is presented at the ID (infectious disease) week conference as an abstract called "Towards Earlier Diagnosis of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs): A Case Series, Including One Associated with Squirrel Brain Consumption."
The report identified a 61-year-old male who was diagnosed with the rare brain infection called Creutzfeldt-Jakob variant Disease after eating squirrel brains. He arrived at a hospital after suffering thinking problems and an odd walk, according to the report. He died after being diagnosed with the infection in 2015.
The disease is similar to "mad cow disease," which causes tiny holes to fill the brain with spongiform (which is where "spongiform" comes from), according to the National Institutes of Health.
The infection is always fatal, and most who get the disease live around a year. It causes rapid degeneration of memory, thinking, vision and coordination before death and death, according to the NIH.
It is part of a family of diseases caused by prions, which are infectious proteins that infiltrate the brain. Chronic wasting disease in a fatal case, a fatal family insomnia, a different brain infection affecting humans that removes the ability to sleep, and finally death.
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is extremely rare, with only four people ever confirmed to have the disease in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The non-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is also rare, with only about 350 cases per year in the United States, according to the NIH. Most people develop the disease spontaneously, while a few inherit it. Some acquire it through other means, such as ingesting infected tissue – which is what scientists suspect happened with the squirrel brains.
Tara Chen, a medical student who produced the report, said that it was not entirely clear that the cause of the infection, and that the researchers were trying to secure autopsy samples, according to LiveScience. Chen said it was not clear whether the man or the brains themselves were contaminated with the subject, according to the site.
Squirrel-brain transmission of the disease is not a new concern. Doctors in Kentucky put out a warning against eating squirrel brains in 1997 after 11 people were diagnosed in the state with the non-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, according to the New York Times.
"'All of them were squirrel-brain eaters,' 'a doctor told the paper at the time.
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