Discussion on kuru, scrapie and the experimental kuru-like syndrome in chimpanzees.

Abstract

It is strangely interesting that scrapie, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system of sheep, and kuru, a rare degenerative disease of the central nervous system of man in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea and restricted to the Fore peoples and their immediate neighbors, have given rise to a large portion of world research activity in the field of slow virus infections. Dr. Gibbs has reviewed the quest for infectious agents in chronic and subacute degenerative diseases of the central nervous system which has been in progress in our laboratories for the past several years, with particular attention to scrapie, the infection on which Dr. Morris, Dr. Gibbs, and I began to work after Hadlow had brought to my attention the remarkable similarities in the neuropathology and course between kuru in man and scrapie in sheep (Hadlow, 1959). Dr. Gibbs has also brought our previous report of transmission of a kuru-like disease to chimpanzees (Gajdusek et al, 1966) up to date with the final score of seven cases of kuru-like syndrome in eight chimpanzees inoculated with human kuru brain material. It is this first successful transmission of a subacute or chronic central nervous system degeneration of man to primate that has excited our imagination and raised our hopes that other subacute and chronic degenerative nervous system disorders may also be transmissible.