kurun.
/ˈkʊruː/ A progressive and fatal degenerative disease of the brain which is endemic in an area of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea and is characterized by ataxia and tremor.
ΘΚΠ
the world > health and disease > ill health > a disease > disorders of internal organs > disorders of nervous system > [noun] > disorders of brain > other brain disorders
brain damage1864
mind-blindness1888
satellitosis1906
syringobulbia1908
Alzheimer's disease1911
kernicterus1912
pseudotumour1914
brain death1928
punch-drunk1928
Sturge–Weber syndrome1935
Alzheimer1938
Creutzfeldt–Jakob1939
Alzheimer1940
Schilder's disease1940
hypsarrhythmia1952
kuru1957
laughing death1957
Minamata disease1957
myelinolysis1959
spongiform encephalopathy1960
CJD1975
old-timer's disease1983
mad —— disease1990
1957 New Eng. Jrnl. Med. 14 Nov. 974/1 The current report of our preliminary findings is based on the careful study of 114 cases of this new disease, which the local populace know by the name of ‘kuru’.
1958 Times 9 Jan. 10/1 It is estimated that about 1 per cent. of the population is affected with kuru.
1965 Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 10 Oct. 2 Outside the Fore region only the adjacent areas where inter-marriage has certainly occurred show cases of kuru.
1967 New Scientist 26 Jan. 190/2 A brain disease known as kuru..appeared about 45 years ago in a tribe of cannibals in New Guinea and is now the tribe's most common cause of death.
1971 Nature 30 Apr. 589/1 Kuru..has so far been transmitted from eleven different human patients to eighteen chimpanzees with incubation periods of 14–39 months after intracerebral inoculation.
1973 Sci. Amer. Jan. 126/3 The prototype of the slow virus [disease] is probably kuru, that remarkable affliction of the people of the South Fore River of New Guinea, apparently spread by ritual cannibalism of the brain tissue.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1976; most recently modified version published online March 2018).
<
n.1957