A man from North Belfast has contracted vCJD, it has been revealed today.
It is understood the man, who is being treated in Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital, is in a stable condition.
He is the second person to be diagnosed with the disease in Northern Ireland. Mr Maurice Callaghan, the first diagnosed victim, died in 1995.
According to a hospital source, new Variant CJD is not infectious and can only be transmitted to humans via special laboratory injection methods.
It is believed a researcher from the National CJD Surveillance Unit, which is based in Edinburgh, is gathering relevant information on the case.
Last year, researchers in Israel claimed to have developed a simple diagnostic test for variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (vCJD). However, doctors often cannot be sure that a person has vCJD until after a postmortem examination.
Variant CJD - a fatal degenerative disease affecting the brain - is hard to distinguish from other degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
CJD is linked to BSE, the bovine degenerative disease and is generally contracted by eating products made from contaminated cows.