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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 07 2016, @08:57PM   Printer-friendly

NPR's "The Salt" column carries the grusome (but interesting) story of a medical mystery:

When researchers made their way to the highlands of Papua New Guinea in the 1950s, they found something disturbing. Among a tribe of about 11,000 people called the Fore, up to 200 people a year had been dying of an inexplicable illness. They called the disease kuru, which means "shivering" or "trembling."

Once symptoms set in, it was a swift demise. First, they'd have trouble walking, a sign that they were about to lose control over their limbs. They'd also lose control over their emotions, which is why people called it the "laughing death." Within a year, they couldn't get up off the floor, feed themselves or control their bodily functions.

Shirley Lindenbaum, a medical anthropologist with the City University of New York, who continues to write about the epidemic, knew it couldn't be genetic, because it affected women and children in the same social groups, but not in the same genetic groups. She also knew that it had started in villages in the north around the turn of the century, and then moved south over the decades.
...
Lindenbaum had a hunch about what was going on: In many villages, when a person died, they would be cooked and consumed. It was an act of love and grief. ... Women removed the brain, mixed it with ferns, and cooked it in tubes of bamboo. They fire-roasted and ate everything except the gall bladder. It was primarily adult women who did so, says Lindenbaum, because their bodies were thought to be capable of housing and taming the dangerous spirit that would accompany a dead body.

Finally, after urging from researchers like Lindenbaum, biologists came around to the idea that the strange disease stemmed from eating dead people.

The story goes on to explain that the disease wasn't spread by a virus or a bacterium, fungus, or parasite. It could survive being boiled into soup, and had no DNA. It was a totally new infectious agent.

It was a twisted protein called "prions," or "proteinaceous infectious particles", that could cause normal proteins in nerve cells to twist just like them, and slowly over long periods of time kill areas of nerve cells in the brain.

The story goes on to cover the similarity to Mad Cow Disease, a species jumping disease also caused by prions, and Chronic Wasting Disease that is affecting mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, and moose in 21 states.

The CDC is working with public health authorities in Wyoming and Colorado to monitor hunters for signs of prion disease.

If the Zika doesn't get us, the Kuru probably will.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @09:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @09:39PM (#398878)

    Zika's pretty mild as diseases go. I'm not sure the comparison is warranted; this prion stuff I need to read about, it sounds crazy. I mean, Zika's not great, but I think people are overreacting. It isn't likely to kill you or anything. I'm not sure we should spend such measures on fighting it as some places are, and just focus on minimizing the damage to the group most at risk (pregnant women probably).

    I read somewhere there's evidence exposure increases resistance to Zika, which suggests it'll probably die down to being a regular mild childhood disease once people get over their panicking. I haven't read the latest on it in awhile though so I might be a bit off.

    I'd be interested if anyone who knows more about it had something to say.

  • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday September 07 2016, @09:53PM

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 07 2016, @09:53PM (#398889)

    Pretty mild as long as you aren't an fetus at least. And mild as far as we know now. There were other of viruses we never worried about until we found out they were giving us cancer. There is always the possibility we may find secondary conditions linked to Zika down the road in adults as well.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 07 2016, @11:43PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday September 07 2016, @11:43PM (#398919)

      And more specifically, it's probably only a danger to fetuses whose mothers don't already have the antibodies. I believe I heard it originated in Africa, where it's relatively harmless, the danger is specifically to the unborn children of newly infected women.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 07 2016, @10:01PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday September 07 2016, @10:01PM (#398892) Journal

    You're right. For all the hand-wringing, Zika is not that bad. But women pop out babies all the time, and there is nothing good about having a microcephaly baby. Looks like 16 babies have been born with birth defects (not just microcephaly) due to Zika in the U.S.

    http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/united-states.html [cdc.gov]
    http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/pregnancy-outcomes.html [cdc.gov]
    http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/pregwomen-uscases.html [cdc.gov]

    It seems that after a week-long fever, you don't have symptoms of Zika any more, but the virus can be transmitted for weeks beyond the onset of your symptoms. The symptoms are also very mild... maybe down to a fever and a rash. So the fact that it is not deadly allows it to spread to more pregnant women.

    The virus is most likely to kill... the unborn child, due to birth defects.

    Zika is definitely going to cause more damage than Kuru (anyone know where can I get free-range organic craft human meat?).

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    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @11:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @11:19PM (#398910)

      Women banned men for marrying girl children.

      Fuck them.

      Just desserts.