People in Papua New Guinea who took part in cannibalistic rituals appear to have rapidly evolved resistance to the deadly prion disease kuru.

Researchers who performed genetic analysis on 3,000 people from the Eastern Highland populations of the island found a novel gene variant that they say is an acquired resistance factor which was selected for during PNG’s kuru epidemic in the first half of the last century.

In total 709 villagers in these populations ate the brains of their dead in rituals but only 152 died of the CJD-like disease kuru, the team report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“It’s absolutely fascinating to see Darwinian principles at work here. This community of people has developed their own biologically unique response to a truly terrible epidemic, ” says study author John Collinge of the Medical Research Council Prion Unit at University College London (press release).

“The fact that this genetic evolution has happened in a matter of decades is remarkable.”

Collinge suggests that the discovery may shed light on possible cures or treatments for prion diseases in general.

Eating brains in ‘mortuary feasts’ was banned in PNG in the 1950s and kuru has since disappeared.