Kuru remains the only known epidemic of a human prion disease. By understanding this condition and how it works, scientists might design treatments to prevent, or at least reduce, the chances of ...

For decades, a rare disease crawled across Papua New Guinea. When scientists realized what was behind kuru, it caught everyone by surprise. But similar diseases can still be transmitted through food.

First discovered among the Fore people of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, kuru (“shaking death”) was contracted when people (mostly women) consumed their dead as part of a funereal ...

Kuru is caused when people eat human brain or nervous system tissue that is tainted with an infectious protein and results in symptoms nearly identical to ... eventually leading to cell death.

The "laughing death" was caused by eating human meat. ... And they were getting really sick. The disease, called kuru, caused the ill to lose control of their bodies and their emotions.

Kuru is an extremely rare illness caused by a contagious protein (prion) found in the brain tissue of people with the disease. The only way to acquire kuru is to ingest this tissue or have the ...