Revisão Acesso aberto Revisado por pares

The changing face of kuru: a personal perspective

2008; Royal Society; Volume: 363; Issue: 1510 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rstb.2008.0085

ISSN

1471-2970

Autores

John D. Mathews,

Tópico(s)

Prion Diseases and Protein Misfolding

Resumo

The epidemic of kuru is now known to have been transmitted among the Fore by ritual consumption of infected organs from deceased relatives. As cannibalism was suppressed by government patrol officers during the 1950s, most transmission had ceased by 1957, when the kuru research programme first commenced. As predicted in the 1960s, the epidemic has waned, with progressive ageing of kuru-affected cohorts over the years to 2007. The few cases seen in the twenty-first century, with the longest incubation periods, were almost certainly exposed as children prior to 1960. Although the research programme had almost no role in bringing the kuru epidemic to an end, it did provide important knowledge that was to help the wider world in controlling the later epidemics of iatrogenic and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Referência(s)