The following is my report of a patient, Mrs. Smith, who I examined this afternoon: Symptoms Mrs. Smith told me she was born in New Guinea and has been living in the United States for the past twenty-five years. She has had no major health problems noted in her history, and prior to her recent medical issues she has maintained good health. She came in presenting common symptoms of some type of neurological disorder. She had trouble walking, and she told me that her coordination was diminishing. I could hear that her speech was somewhat slurred, and she indicated that she was having trouble chewing and swallowing. She presented with pain in her arms and legs, and she also had some muscle twitching and tremors. Differential Diagnosis My initial thought as to what could be going on with Mrs. Smith is perhaps an onset of …show more content…
Most of the time the female relatives and the children would consume the brain, which was usually the most infectious organ. If the deceased person were infected with Kuru, the relatives that engaged in the cannibalism would then also become infected. This specific disease has an incubation period that could exceed fifty years, so it is possible that these rituals were performed on individuals who had not yet represented any symptoms. This is also why Mrs. Smith could have developed this disease now even after being removed from the community and rituals for so long. Luckily these rituals are no longer practiced because of the abundance of information regarding these PrP diseases. Here in the United States, we have seen more common cases of certain PrP diseases displayed in cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE,) otherwise known as mad cow disease. It is ironic that this is in fact the diagnosis of such a rare disease we typically would not see in the United States because there have been recent studies shining some new light on this specific