Chronic Wasting Disease

The Norwegian Veterinary Institute (NVI) surveillance chronic wasting disease (CWD) in the cervid populations.  

The programme include moose (Alcec alces), red deer (Cervus elaphus), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and fallow deer (Dama dama).

The aim of the surveillance programme is to document the status of CWD in the cervid populations in Norway. 

2025

A total of 11,612 samples of wild, semi-domesticated and captive Norwegian cervids were analysed in 2025. Of these, three moose (Alces alces) tested positive for CWD. All were old females culled in Folldal (20 years old), Tvedestrand (17 years old) and Selbu (16 years old) municipalities. The later case was a traffic injury.


The cases detected showed disease characteristics previously described for the species in previous reports, i.e. PrPSc was only detected in brain tissue, and no prions were detected in lymphoid tissues with diagnostic tests (ELISA and western blot). In the Nordic countries, CWD has shown sporadic appearance in moose and red deer, whilst in reindeer the disease has been contagious and with lymphoid detections in routine diagnostics.

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