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Kuru is a rare, incurable neurodegenerative disorder which was prevalent among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea in the 1950s and 60s. Everyone has normal prion proteins, found mostly in the brain. However, infectious prions, which cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathies diseases such as kuru, can induce abnormal folding of normal prion proteins, which leads to symptoms such as coordination problems and neurodegeneration.

The term kuru derives from the Fore word kuria or guria ("to shake"), due to the body tremors that are a classic symptom of the disease. It is now widely accepted that kuru was transmitted among members of the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea via funerary cannibalism. Traditionally, deceased family members were cooked and eaten, which was thought to help free the spirit of the dead. Females and children usually consumed the brain, the organ in which infectious prions were most concentrated. Thus, the disease was more prevalent among women and children.

Due to kuru’s long incubation period of anywhere from 10 to over 50 years, the disease has lingered. However, the epidemic has declined, from 200 deaths per year in 1957 to 1 or no deaths annually in 2005, indicating that the epidemic has declined significantly.