Eat like a cannibal to ward off mad-cow disease
PARIS -- Take a cue from our ancestors' cannibalistic eating habits to avoid getting the mad-cow disease, a recent study advises.
Widespread cannibalism among our forefathers may have transferred genes to some modern humans which provide protection against so-called prion ailments such as Creutzfeld Jacob disease -- the human variant of 'mad cow disease', Dr John of University College London said in a study published in the Science journal on Friday.
The report claims that some of our prehistoric ancestors were believed to have been frequent consumers of human flesh -- which can spread 'prion' diseases.
The practice of cannibalism was widespread, and 'not just some rarity that happened in New Guinea', Dr Collinge said.
This meant that natural selection allowed the spread of mutant versions of the prion protein genes, which would have given prehistoric humans a better chance of surviving prion disease epidemics.
'What we are showing here is evidence that selection for these polymorphisms (mutations) has been widespread or happened very early in the evolution of modern humans, before human beings spread all over the planet,' said the scientist.
Prions are a type of protein, and the diseases now associated with them -- notably bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE in cattle and new-variant Creutzfeld Jacob diseases in humanes -- are spread by a defective variety of such molecules.
The diseases are known to be transmitted by eating tainted meat, and scientists say a particularly unusual and worrying feature is their ability to be passed between completely different species, such as cows and humans.
Dr Collinge and his team had shown in a previous study that people with one normal copy and one mutated copy of the prion protein were somehow protected against Creutzfeld Jacob disease, in a phenomenon known as 'balancing selection'.
The study in Science shows that large numbers of the Fore people from the highlands of Papua New Guinea -- who were devastated by an epidemic of a prion disease known as kuru between 1920 and 1950 -- now appear to have the mutant gene protecting against such ailments.
The team found that out of 30 Fore women who participated in mortuary tests, some 23 possessed one normal copy and one mutant variant of the prion gene.
According to oral history, groups from the Fore started consuming dead relatives around the end of the nineteenth century, a practice that continued until the Australians, who then administered the territory, put a stop to it in the mid-1950s. -- AFP |
