THE HAGUE - The Netherlands on Friday reported the country's first case of the human form of mad cow disease.
The Dutch health ministry said it was not immediately clear how the person had been infected with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) but that investigations were ongoing.
The Netherlands has reported the case to the European authorities, the ministry said in a statement.
The Dutch patient had not been a blood, tissue or organ donor nor had the patient ever received a transfusion or been a tissue or organ recipient, the ministry said.
"The chance that this patient has contaminated others or has been contaminated by a third party is therefore extremely small," the statement said.
The disease, vCJD, is a human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in which a rogue prion protein proliferates in the brain, turning it spongy.
It is believed to have leapt the species barrier to humans who ate beef from infected cattle.
The epicentre of the outbreak of BSE, which came to the fore in the 1980s, was Britain, which exported cattle and beef products to many countries within the European Union (EU) and further afield.
The source was only curbed in 1996 with tough EU-wide laws on animal feed, slaughter of suspect animals and bans on the sale of animal parts most likely to have the prions.
So far 149 people have died of vCJD in Britain, where there are also six suspected cases of people who are still alive, according to figures obtained in early April on the official British vCJD website.
In France 11 cases have been reported. After France comes Ireland, with two cases, followed by Canada, Japan, Italy and the United States, with one death each, according to a toll compiled by AFP.
04/21/2005 17:17 GMT