Table of Contents
- Overview
- Symptoms
- Treatment
- Prevention
- Images
Kuru is a disease of the nervous system.
Causes, incidence, and risk factors
Kuru is a very rare disease. It is caused by an infectious protein (prion) found in contaminated human brain tissue.
Kuru is found among people from New Guinea who practiced a form of cannibalism in which they ate the brains of dead people as part of a funeral ritual. This practice stopped in 1960, but cases of kuru were reported for many years afterward because the disease has a long incubation period.
Kuru causes brain and nervous system changes similar to
The main risk factor for kuru is eating human brain tissue, which can contain the infectious particles.
Images
Review Date: 12/07/2010
Reviewed By: David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of
General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington
School of Medicine; Jatin M. Vyas, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in
Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Assistant in Medicine, Division
of Infectious Disease, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts
General Hospital. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical
Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.
A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, also known as the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission (www.urac.org)
