a slow-virus disease rarely seen today due to the discontinuance of cannibalism and ritualistic butchering; caused neurodegenerative changes; symptoms included gait disturbance, incoordination, and swallowing difficulty.
Discovered in New Guinea in 1955. Kuru is actually a CJD. Kuru killed thousands of people in New Guinea.
a form of TSE that appeared in Papua New Guinea in the first half of this century. It was eventually found to be due to a practice of ritual cannibalism where dead tribal members were eaten as a mark of respect during the funeral feast, men getting the muscle and women and children being fed the poorer brain and guts. It is thought that originally a member of the tribe developed sporadic CJD, and that through cannibalism the disease was spread through the tribe, the bodies of those who died of the disease wee then also eaten, compounding the problem. The epidemic ceased after cannibalism was outlawed in 1956.
A TSE found only in the Fore tribe in New Guinea most likely related to ritualistic cannabalism carried out amoung members of the tribe. Transmissibility of the disease has been established through the work of Gadjusek.
A disease found in the Fore tribe in New Guinea, and due to the eating of human infected tissue by members of a tribe. In general the women ate brain tissue rather than the men and so it was the women and children that died relatively rapidly of the disease.
Kuru (also known as laughing sickness due to the outbursts of laughter that mark its second phase) was first noted in New Guinea in the early 1900s. By the 1950s, anthropologists and Australian government officials reported that kuru ("shaking death" in the language of the Fore) was rampant among the South Fore, a single census division of approximately 8,000 individuals within the Okapa subdistrict. This particular group partook in ritual acts of mortuary cannibalism, a tradition later determined to be responsible for the epidemic transmission of the disease.