Why Files guide to chronic-wasting and mad-cow jargon

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE): Mad cow disease.

Chronic wasting disease (CWD): A TSE affecting deer and elk in Wisconsin, Colorado and Wyoming.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: CJD. A fatal, human brain illness, appears in one person in a million per year. If caused by eating mad cows, it's called "new variant CJD, or nvCJD."

Kuru: A human TSE once found in New Guinea, transmitted when people handled and ate the brains of dead relatives.

Scrapie: A TSE that has afflicted sheep since the 1700s or before. Not known to be transmitted to humans, but the likely source of BSE and CWD.

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE): The group of infectious brain diseases caused by prions.

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