Can you tell me what Kuru Disease is?

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I have to do a project on a rare disease and I founf Kuru disease which seems pretty interesting. But no site I find really tells me what it is, how its caused, and what happens when you get it.
It's a prion disease, comparable to mad cow. Prions are malformed proteins that cause numerous problems in the nervous system by creating plaques that disrupt tissue structure. Kuru, like all prion related diseases, is fatal, usually within 18 months. Symptoms include inability to control basic motor functions, trembling, and headaches. Cannibalism is related to it, I am unsure completely why, but they studied an epidemic in Papua New Guinea where the families would eat the dead in mourning. This would make sense in that they discovered the cause of Mad Cow Disease was because slaughterhouses were feeding the cows recycled and discarded cow parts. Gross and shameful, but true.  (+ info)

Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome and kuru are both examples of infections caused by?

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A. a slow virus.
B. a latent bacterium.
C. a protozoa.
D. spores.
prions, proteinacious infectious particles. At 1st when the real makeup wasn't known they were called slow viral infections, but they are most definitely not viral, they contain no nucleic acid material, see also;fatal familial insomnia,scrapie,mad cow disease (BSE). chronic wasting disease of captive mule deer,there was one other related to the mink,but I can't remember what is was called.  (+ info)

Explain the disease "Kuru" please?

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I have a Vet Science question about a disease called "Kuru". Could someone answer the following questions about it? Thanks.

1) What is it?
2) How is it acquired?
3) -optional question- Mortality rate estimate?
1) Kuru is an incurable degenerative neurological disorder (brain disease) that is a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy found in humans.
Kuru dementia is an extremely rare form of dementia restricted to the highlands of New Guinea. Kuru that means trembling with fear.


2)Kuru is a disease passed on during funeral rites of the Fore tribe when the body of the dead was ritually cooked and eaten. The brain, the most infected part of the body of someone with Kuru was eaten by the closest females relatives of the departed. The women and children scooped out the brain from the skull and would not wash their hands for many weeks after the funeral. The disease was probably also passed onto many others in the tribe because of this practice.

3) Kuru dementia is now almost non existent for two main reasons. The disease wiped out many tribes who practiced this ritual and Government in New Guinea discouraged cannibalism.



if you find this answer worth please do mark it as best answer  (+ info)

what is kuru disease?

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  (+ info)

Can anyone help me with a Health problem?

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A few years back I took a trip to Papua New Guinea and ate some of the local food during an eco-trip into the native villages. Ever since I haven't been able to stop smiling, even when I am not happy.

The natives called me Kuru which was nice, but I can't figure out why.

Can anyone help?
I've been scratching my brain, but can't figure it out. Perhaps you need a diet change.  (+ info)

Can I get ill from eating (cooked) human brains?

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...Something like Kuru? Or am I safe?
absolutely, in papua new guinea, they used to hold these rituals where when the elders of the village passed over, members of the tribe would devour certain organs of the body believing that they would harbour that persons talents. for instance they would devour the elders brains hoping to inherit their wisdom, their have been documented cases of the people then being infected with a neurelogical disorder similar to that of mad cow disease! i wouldnt recommend it.....  (+ info)

do you need vaccines to go to arkansas?

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i'm going on a vacation there and haven't checked out with my doctor. my cousin said i better get vaccinated. he joeks a lot, but he also tells the truth a lot. but he jokes so much, but he tells the truth just as much. and i think he was kidding but i don't want to risk catching kuru or another disease.
No. Vaccines are usually only needed when you travel outside the US to a country that has a high incidence of infectious/contagious disease.  (+ info)

i just ate cake should i burn the cake calories?

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breakfast :freshly squeezed orange juice.
after breakfast i rode on my stationary bike and burned 1000calories in an hr and 20min.
then i had lunch.which consisted of (bulgur pilaf and kuru fasulye also 4zeytinyagli yaprak.)these are all turkish foods.then i had dinner which consisted of the same thing as lunch but i ate very little.
then i ate cake. should i ride on my stationary bike again since i ate the cake.
i eat very healthy and watch my calorie intake.
what should i do should i burn the cake calories if i am trying to lose weight? or should i do it tomorrow??
Um excuse but yes i did burn 1000 calories in 80 minutes. İt is possible.
By the way it sounds you don't eat cake that often. I would say to relax with your belly full of cake and hit up the cardio tommorrow. Everyone needs a cheat meal once in a while, it throws your body a curveball and the extra calories actually boost your metablolism. Of course, you should only eat it once in a while, but that cake is not going to make you fat overnight, if you do the bike again, you'll probably just feel like crap tommorrow from overdoing it. Hope this helped ya out!  (+ info)

INTERESTING DISEASES?

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Im doing a powerpoint on a disease of my choice. I would love to have a disease with plenty of information, but not one that is well known. So I wouldnt choose cancer or anything like that. I already researched KURU, so please dont suggest that. I really want something interesting, possibly having to do with the brain, but that is not neccessary. Some that I would possibly choose would be epilepsy, progeria, hemophilia, and alzheimers. IF you could give me some different interesting ones with a brief description I would appreciate it! thanx =]...
lupus  (+ info)

I've discovered the cause of schizophrenia?

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Game over. I won. I devoted all of my free-time for the last year or two to researching three conditions which have the same underlying mechanism of operation. I let my grades fall, lost most of the muscle I had made from lifting weights the past few years, and haven't touched a woman in years. I can't remember how long it's been, but I found what I've been searching for and that's all that matters.

Wheat causes the symptoms that are associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia through modulation of the immune system. Mainstream medicine is treating the digestive system as if it can have no effect on the rest of the body, but it is the largest organ in the lymphoid system and therefore it's effects are much broader than would be expected. 1984 was a good year for me. I have an endless amount of studies that supported this hypotheses, but now that I know the molecular cause I can further my theory on the development and progression of the illness.

Biol Psychiatry. 1984 Mar; 19(3): 385-99.
Is schizophrenia rare if grain is rare?
Dohan FC, Harper EH, Clark MH, Rodrigue RB, Zigas V.
If, as hypothesized, neuroactive peptides from grain glutens are the major agents evoking schizophrenia in those with the genotype(s), it should be rare if grain is rare. To test this, we analyzed the results of our clinical examinations (e.g., kuru) and observations of anthropologists on peoples consuming little or no grain. Only two overtly insane chronic schizophrenics were found among over 65,000 examined or closely observed adults in remote regions of Papua New Guinea (PNG, 1950-1967) and Malaita , Solomon Islands (1980-1981), and on Yap , Micronesia (1947-1948). In preneuroleptic Europe over 130 would have been expected. When these peoples became partially westernized and consumed wheat, barley beer, and rice, the prevalence reached European levels. Our findings agree with previous epidemiologic and experimental results indicating that grain glutens are harmful to schizophrenics.
Thank you Ms. Cat for the only reasonable comment, but I'm a psychologist and there are many different types of conditions which resemble BPD (there may even be many different types of the disorder) and the fact that a doctor diagnosed you with the condition doesn't necessarily mean that it is the proper diagnoses for you. You may have other allergies as well which cause your condition, an allergy which can affect a person mentally but not physically is termed a 'cerebral allergy.'

To those of you which left all of the other comments, simple logic proves that you are not very intelligent people, so I couldn't care less what your opinion is on the current subject. Why would anyone with a brain go around saying their opinion on something without anything to back it up? It's an uneducated opinion, just like my opinion is that Twilight is the lamest movie of all time and people that watch it are stupid. But I don't go around criticizing the movie bc it wastes MY TIME and achieves NOTHING!
H J Marley, your comment is actually reasonable too, I didn't mean that I am the only person to discover that wheat is behind said disorders. Many Drs have been saying it for years, over 40 to be exact, and there are thousands of studies on the subject, I just picked one that I liked to use it as an example.

The reason why I said that I DISCOVERED it is because I found the particular cytokine which is responsible for signaling to the immune system in my own research. After I ID-ed the cytokine I looked through the research and a few other researchers have already suggested what I've found.

So, I'm not the only person to have discovered this, but this was the simplest way to phrase it. I don't care about anyone's opinion here, there aren't very many college educated people on here so all I hear is noise, my intention in posting this is to help people with one or more of the conditions. I have OCD, but it goes away when I don't eat wheat, and comes back when I eat it again.
After 6 years of university studies in psychology I don't know what a "schizophrenic paranoid" is, so perhaps you "are all wet"?

Actually, "Why would anyone with a brain go around saying their opinion on something without anything to back it up?" makes perfect sense. You are correct that I didn't state how I came to that conclusion, bc I assumed you would know that no good can come from telling everyone your opinion but not how you reached it. That statement doesn't apply to you, bc you stated how you came to your conclusion. If you truly are diagnosed with schizophrenia you might want to watch your interleukin levels, these "cytokine immune system signaling molecules" determine quite a bit of a person's IMMUNE REACTION.

I do have references, you didn't ask for them, this isn't a research paper and there are very few physiological processes which can be detailed easily so instead I chose to give the minimum amount of info and interested parties can contact me.
I'm working on my bio-psych doctorate, and I have participated in many research projects, but no one listens to you if you say that medicine made by companies isn't necessary bc symptoms go away if the patient doesn't eat something. The companies that make medicines for schizophrenia have spent billions on them, there is no way they would admit that all of those drugs are unnecessary with proper diet changes. Wheat and/or gluten is in 99.99% of packaged foods, not just things like bread.

Also, it's not logical to say that "I'm not who I say I am bc I should be publishing in journals and not YA" if I was. This would be like me saying that because you use YA a lot you have no social life, this may be true for some people but it's a generalization and therefore it's not logical to use to determine probability.
Yes, I agree. The first time I saw anything about this was in the 1980s. My partner at that time was schizophrenic, so I was always on the lookout for anything that could help.

Gluten was the culprit suggested then. When he cut bread, pastry and so on, his symptoms lessened. We weren't aware then just how much of the processed food on the market contains the stuff, so maybe if we had been more aware, and stricter, they would have gone completely. Or perhaps casein should also be omitted. Anyway, we parted ways and he now lives hundreds of miles from me, though we do keep in touch.  (+ info)

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