Quantcast

Kuru: A tale of cannibalism and rogue-proteins

In the highlands of Papua New Guinea in the 1950s and 60s, it was noticed that people (mostly women) of the Fore tribe were dying of what was originally thought to be a genetic disorder since it happened among family members.

The disease stole away the affected person’s ability to talk, walk and eat and to eventually die a shivering death.

Image/CIA

Image/CIA

Well, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Neurological Institute had an interest in this strange brain disease. According to Robert Desowitz in his book “Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus”, he details how they discovered it was an infectious agent.

A scientist named Carleton Gadjusek sent the brain of a dead woman back to his lab in Bethesda, Maryland. He homogenized some brain tissue and inoculated it into a chimp named Georgette.

Nothing immediate happens and Georgette was nearly forgotten until a few years later it was noticed that Georgette was huddled in the corner of her cage shivering with a blank stare of her face. Gadjusek believed at the time it was caused by a “slow virus”, but no virus was seen using a electron microscope. The chimp had what we now know to be kuru, a fatal disease belonging to what we now call the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs).

Over 1100 people died of kuru for 10 years from 1957 to 1968. The Fore people were involved in ritualistic cannabilism. Upon the death of a person in the tribe, the women would prepare and consume the corpse; removing the arms and feet, stripping the muscle from the limbs and remove and eat the brain.

The women were also known to feed portions of human brains to their children. The brain tissue from a corpse with kuru is highly infectious and a certain death sentence.

Kuru is a TSE, same as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, mad cow disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep and chronic wasting seen in elk.

TSEs are also known as prion diseases. A prion is transmissible like a microbe but has no nucleic acid, no DNA or RNA. It is a rogue-protein that “recruit” normal proteins and flip them into a rogue- prion shape that infect other cells. The prions clump together and accumulate in the brain eventually giving the brain its characteristic “sponge” or swiss cheese appearance.

Kuru has a long incubation period ranging from 2 years to 2 decades. The symptoms are broken down into three stages.

The first stage or ambulant stage includes unsteadiness of stance, voice, gait, eyes, tremor, and slurring of speech.

The second stage or sedentary stage is defined by the person not being able to walk without support, severe tremors, loss of coordination, muscle jerks, outbursts of laughter and mental slowing.

In the last stage, the terminal stage, the person is unable to sit up, tremors, urinary and fecal incontinence, difficulty swallowing and death.

The above symptoms are consistent with dysfunction of the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls these functions.

There is no treatment for kuru or any other prion disease and they are eventually always fatal. Kuru has all but disappeared from the Fore tribe since the practice of cannibalism was stopped years ago.

For more infectious disease news and information, visit and “like” the Infectious Disease News Facebook page

Looking for a job in health care? Check here to see what’s available

Chagas in Black and White: T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise featuring the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi

Giardia in Black and White: T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise with a clean, computerized image of a Giardia intestinalis trophozoite

Blood flukes in Black and White : T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise with a clean, computerized image of the three schistosomes

 

On the DISPATCH: Headlines  Local  Opinion

Subscribe to Weekly Newsletter

* indicates required
/ ( mm / dd ) [ALL INFO CONFIDENTIAL]

About the Author

- Writer, Co-Founder and Executive Editor of The Global Dispatch. Robert has been covering news in the areas of health, world news and politics for a variety of online news sources. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the website, Outbreak News Today and hosts the podcast, Outbreak News Interviews on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify Robert is politically Independent and a born again Christian Follow @bactiman63

Displaying 5 Comments
Have Your Say
  1. Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and other prion diseases - Outbreak News Today says:

    […] Kuru: A tale of cannibalism and rogue-proteins  […]

  2. Parkinson’s-like disease linked to new prion, UCSF researchers | Outbreak News Today says:

    […] Kuru: A tale of cannibalism and rogue-proteins  […]

  3. Prion diseases and the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation | Outbreak News Today says:

    […] Kuru: A tale of cannibalism and rogue-proteins  […]

  4. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: North Carolina hospital says at least 18 surgical patients exposed - The Global Dispatch says:

    […] Related story: Kuru: A tale of cannibalism and rogue-proteins […]

  5. The Mouse goes RFID: A digital walk through the Disney Resort – The Global Dispatch | Car Navigation Store says:

    […] […]

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these html tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

like_us_on_facebook

 

The Global Dispatch Facebook page- click here

Movie News Facebook page - click here

Television News Facebook page - click here

Weird News Facebook page - click here 

DISPATCH RADIO

dispatch_radio

THE BRANDON JONES SHOW

brandon_jones_show-logo

Archives