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kuru |
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kuru /ku·ru/ (koo´roo) an infectious form of prion disease with a long incubation period found only in New Guinea and thought to be associated with ritual cannibalism.
kuru a chronic, progressive, uniformly fatal central nervous system prion disease of humans probably resembling the scrapie agent of sheep, and transmissible to nonhuman primates; seen only in the Fore and neighboring peoples of New Guinea. Believed to be transmitted by cannibalism. |
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Outbreaks of prion disease include an epidemic of kuru among the cannibalistic Fore tribe of the New Guinea highlands (9) and an epizootic of BSE in the United Kingdom, caused by feeding to cattle protein supplements derived from prion-infected cattle offal (10). Scientists have discovered that the condition, called fatal familial insomnia, arises from a genetic mutation that creates prions, the same kind of misshapen proteins that cause scrapie, mad cow disease, kuru, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It is a prion disease requiring a protein component (prion) for transmissibility, similar to kuru, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), and scrapie. |
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kuru
