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27 Sep 08
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MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- The mother of a Spanish man who died from the human form of mad cow disease has also died from the illness, Spain's Ministry of Health says.
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It is believed to be the first case in the world where two members of the same family have died from mad cow disease, said Juan Jose Badiola, director of Spain's national research center for mad cow disease.
"It's noteworthy that there's a double case in the same family," Badiola said.
Until now, Badiola added, clinical evidence that he's seen from the United Kingdom and France -- which have had the most deaths due to the human form of mad cow disease -- had not recorded two cases in a single family.
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The latest confirmed case makes a total of four deaths in Spain from mad cow disease since 2005.
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Ten years can pass between eating contaminated tissue and the appearance of the human form of the disease, called variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, health officials say.
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The other case in that province was of a woman, 50, who was a local government worker in the provincial capital. She died in December from mad cow disease.
The first confirmed death from mad cow disease in Spain was in 2005, when a young woman died near Madrid.
In addition to the cases in Spain, as of June the following numbers of cases of human mad cow disease had been reported: 167 in the United Kingdom; 23 in France; four in Ireland; three in the United States; two each in Netherlands and Portugal; and one each in Canada, Italy, Japan and Saudi Arabia
Two of the three U.S. cases, two of the four cases in Ireland and the single cases in Canada and Japan were people probably exposed to the mad cow agent while residing in the United Kingdom, officials have said. One of the 23 French cases may also have been infected in the United Kingdom.
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