Transmission Of Kuru Research Articles

Kuru, the First Human Prion Disease.

Kuru, the first human prion disease was transmitted to chimpanzees by D. Carleton Gajdusek (1923–2008). In this review, we summarize the history of this seminal discovery, its anthropological background, epidemiology, clinical picture, neuropathology, and molecular genetics. We provide descriptions of electron microscopy and confocal microscopy of kuru amyloid plaques retrieved from a paraffin-embedded block of an old kuru case, named Kupenota. The discovery of kuru opened new vistas of human medicine and was pivotal in the subsequent transmission of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, as well as the relevance that bovine spongiform encephalopathy had for transmission to humans. The transmission of kuru was one of the greatest contributions to biomedical sciences of the 20th century.

Epidemiology, social history, and the beginnings of medical anthropology in the highlands of New Guinea

Shirley Lindenbaum’s study in the early 1960s of the origins and transmission of kuru among the Fore people of the eastern highlands of New Guinea is one of the earliest examples of an explicitly medical anthropology. Lindenbaum later described her investigations as assembling ‘an epidemiology of social relations’. How might the emergence of medical anthropology, then, be related to the concurrent development of the social history of medicine and global epidemic intelligence? Are these alternative genealogies for medical anthropology?

Kuru: a journey back in time from papua new Guinea to the neanderthals' extinction.

Kuru, the first human transmissible spongiform encephalopathy was transmitted to chimpanzees by D. Carleton Gajdusek (1923–2008). In this review, I briefly summarize the history of this seminal discovery along its epidemiology, clinical picture, neuropathology and molecular genetics. The discovery of kuru opened new windows into the realms of human medicine and was instrumental in the later transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease as well as the relevance that bovine spongiform encephalopathy had for transmission to humans. The transmission of kuru was one of the greatest contributions to biomedical sciences of the 20th century.

The Natural Incubation Period of Kuru and the Episodes of Transmission in Three Clusters of Patients

Epidemiological data were collected on the slow virus disease, kuru, among the Fore cultural and linguistic group in Papua New Guinea from 65 kuru patients who died or were diagnosed between 1977 and 1981. From these, 3 episodes of cannibalistic feasts were identified, in each of which 2 or more participants were exposed to the infectious agent for the first time and died within weeks or months of each other 25–30 years later. Thus, it is shown that the natural incubation period of kuru could be as long as 25–30 years and is at times identical in 2 or more individuals infected at the same time, even over this span of years; also it is not determined by age at exposure. Further analysis of the episodes supports the concept on which the study was based, namely the transmission of kuru at the time of cannibalistic mourning with primary infection often occurring in infancy or early childhood.

Absence of vertical transmission of subacute spongiform viral encephalopathies in experimental primates.

AbstractVertical transmission of kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and scrapie has not been observed in 10 progeny of chimpanzees and monkeys born to parents which were either incubating or clinically ill with one of the diseases. Moreover, these 10 progeny have remained free of spongiform encephalopathy in spite of intensive postnatal contact with their affected parent(s). These data leave unanswered the mechanisms of viral transmission in the familial forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Transmission of kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease to marmoset monkeys.

Two degenerative diseases of the central nervous system of man, kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, were transmitted to marmoset monkeys. Kuru was passed serially, with decrease in the latent periods.