Pathophysiology Med Surg

Kuru: A Prion Disease

Amanda Tobin, Courtney Breining, Markie Hahn

Kirtland Community College

“Researchers walking into a Fore community, in Papau New Guinea during the 1950’s, would find themselves surrounded by women wearing babies toes around their necks and men sprinkling bone powder over their lunches of native fruits” (Kuru and its Effects on the Fore People of Papua New Guinea, n.d.). Along with these rituals the Fore also practiced Cannibalism. This tribe however did not eat their enemies; instead they ate their family members. When a member of the tribe passed, the maternal kin would be in charge of dismembering the body, stripping the limbs of muscle, removing the brain and cutting open the chest to remove internal organs. The women would then use parts of the body to feed young and elderly as well as themselves because the fat on a person that died quickly resembled pork. This practice came from the belief that after consuming the family member they would always be with you. In modern day society most would realize that consuming another human would be a gateway to infectious diseases. However, when this tribe started experiencing neurological damage they attributed it to a curse rather than a ritual (Kuru and its Effects on the Fore People of Papua New Guinea, n.d.).

The disease is named Kuru, meaning “to shake.” When western society heard about the outbreak of symptoms and death they started to research causes. They found that this disease was a result of eating the deceased infected brain tissue. The infection is caused by prions, which unlike a virus, have no nucleic acids and do not trigger an immune response. It is also not destroyed by extreme hot or cold. The class for this disease is transmissible spongiform encephalopathy because the mutated proteins take over the brain and give it a spongy appearance (Prion, 2003-2012).

Kuru’s targeted healthy material, prions (PrP-sen), which already...