A man who was being treated for suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in Co Donegal has died.
The elderly man died on Tuesday night and his body was taken to Dublin yesterday for a postmortem examination. The Health Service Executive (HSE) North West Area said tests would now take place to determine whether he had the condition.
There are two forms of the degenerative brain disorder CJD. These are sporadic CJD, which occurs sporadically in about one in every million of the population every year. The second form is variant CJD, which is linked to the eating of BSE-infected meat.
The man in Donegal is understood to have quickly developed symptoms which prompted doctors to examine the possibility he might have CJD.
The HSE in the north-west said in a statement that when a patient has specific symptoms involving the nervous system, the diagnosis of CJD has to be considered along with other causes of illness.
A 24-year-old man has been in a Dublin hospital since last October in the first suspected case of vCJD to emanate from within the State. Last week Labour TD Eamon Gilmore told the Dáil the man's family wanted to know how their son contracted the disease, since he had never travelled abroad.
He said it was "clear that he contracted the disease here in this country. This raises the question as to the adequacy of the safeguards which are in place to prevent vCJD arising in this country." Minister of State for Health Brian Lenihan said it was "virtually impossible to identify a specific source of infection" because the incubation period for vCJD is considered to be several years.