Prions are especially insidious because there’s no way of stopping them, science writer D.T. Max, author of a book ... s kuru epidemic, people who they knew had been exposed to the disease ...

The book jumps headfirst into the molecular biology ... makes sheep scrape incessantly against fence posts), mad cow disease and kuru, the illness that plagued those people in Papua New Guinea.

In the 20th century, the Fore began suffering from kuru—a brain disease that resembles mad cow (Creutzfeldt-Jakob) disease. More than 2,500 Fore died before researchers realized that ingesting ...

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 ...

Prion diseases are fatal, transmissible neurodegenerative conditions that include Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy in animals. Kuru is a prion disease ...

The results, published March 19 in The American Journal of Human Genetics, lay the foundation for future research on the fatal disease kuru—a disease transmitted during traditional ...