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Kuru was a rare, incurable, and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that was formerly common among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea.

It was a prion disease that caused tremors and loss of coordination from neurodegeneration. It was spread among the Fore people via funerary cannibalism: deceased family members were traditionally cooked and eaten, which was thought to help free the spirit of the dead. Women and children usually ate the brain, where infectious prions were most concentrated, and therefore were more commonly affected. The outbreak likely originated from a villager developing sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which then spread to others via the consumption of the deceased's brain. Due to a ban by the Australian administration of Papua New Guinea, the Fore had largely stopped eating human flesh around 1960, years before any connection between cannibalism and kuru was seriously considered. However, this did not quickly stop the emergence of new cases, due to the long incubation period of the disease, which can extend to over 50 years.

Kuru, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, is a disease of the nervous system that causes physiological and neurological effects which ultimately lead to death.

Studies from those infected with kuru have revealed explanations for the effects that the disease can have on the brain. These abnormalities in the neurons of the brain infected by kuru were similar to those with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

Electroencephalogram (EEG) is used to distinguish kuru from Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, a similar encephalopathy (any disease that affects the brain structure).

The findings of the study could help researchers better understand and develop treatments for other related prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease.

Kuru was first described in official reports by Australian officers patrolling the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea in the early 1950s. In 1951, Arthur Carey was the first to use the term kuru in a report to describe a new disease afflicting the Fore tribes of Papua New Guinea (PNG). In 1953, kuru was observed by patrol officer John McArthur, who described the disease in his report. After the disease had progressed into a larger epidemic, the tribal people asked Charles Pfarr, a Lutheran medical officer, to come to the area to report the disease to Australian authorities. This disease, the Fore people believed, was caused by ghosts, because of the shaking and strange behaviour that comes with kuru. When kuru had become an epidemic, Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, a virologist, and Vincent Zigas, another physician, started research on the disease. In 1957, Zigas and Gajdusek published a report in the Medical Journal of Australia that suggested that kuru had a genetic origin, and that "any ethnic-environmental variables that are operating in kuru pathogenesis have not yet been determined." While the number of kuru cases was decreasing, medical researchers were finally able to properly investigate kuru, which eventually led to the modern understanding of prions as its cause. In an effort to understand the pathology of kuru disease, Gajdusek established the first experimental tests on chimpanzees for kuru at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Michael Alpers, an Australian doctor, collaborated with Gajdusek by providing samples of brain tissues he had taken from an 11-year-old Fore girl who had died of kuru. In his work, Gajdusek was also the first to compile a bibliography of kuru disease. Within two years, one of the chimps, Daisy, had developed kuru, demonstrating that an unknown disease factor was transmitted through infected biomaterial and that it was capable of crossing the species barrier to other primates.

Manheimer wrote a stage comedy—itself called Kuru—about the discovery of the disease. The video game Dead Island, as well as Dead Island: Riptide, cite kuru as the disease that has swept the fictional islands of Banoi and Palanai.

Quick Facts

• Due to a ban by the Australian administration of Papua New Guinea, the Fore had largely stopped eating human flesh around 1960, years before any connection between cannibalism and kuru was seriously considered.
• In an effort to understand the pathology of kuru disease, Gajdusek established the first experimental tests on chimpanzees for kuru at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
• Electroencephalogram (EEG) is used to distinguish kuru from Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, a similar encephalopathy (any disease that affects the brain structure).
• The outbreak likely originated from a villager developing sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which then spread to others via the consumption of the deceased's brain.
• In 1951, Arthur Carey was the first to use the term kuru in a report to describe a new disease afflicting the Fore tribes of Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Source material: Wikipedia - "Kuru (disease)". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.