Friday, September 27, 2002 5:24PM EDT

By EMMA ROSS, AP MEDICAL WRITER

LONDON (AP) - A 25-year-old woman has been confirmed as Italy's first victim of the human form of mad cow disease, according to research published Friday.

The woman, who lives in Sicily, was hospitalized in November after suffering for six months with pain in her back and legs, a progressive disturbance in her walking and unpleasant sensations when her skin was touched, said the report in The Lancet medical journal.

Italian health authorities said in February that the suspected diagnosis was the fatal brain-wasting condition variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Experts believe variant CJD comes from eating products from cows infected with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Variant CJD has killed more than 100 people since emerging in England in the mid-1990s. Most of those deaths have been in Britain.

The ailing woman in Sicily has never traveled to Britain or any other country with reported cases of mad cow disease. On Friday, Italy's Health Ministry reported that 73 cows have tested positive for the disease.

Variant CJD only can be officially confirmed by examining the brain after death, but Italian specialists say new tests make diagnosis before death more certain.

The woman had a brain scan and experts in Britain analyzed a sample of her tonsils. British scientists recently discovered that traces of the infecting protein can be found in patients' tonsils.

"Tests have confirmed the diagnosis. As neurologists, we are certain," said her doctor, Vincenzo La Bella of the University of Palermo, Sicily, who reported the diagnosis.

"In this case, the MRI (scan) and the analysis of the tonsil biopsy sample were sufficient to make a diagnosis."

Italy detected its first case of mad cow disease last year after the European Union ordered mandatory tests on cattle older than 30 months destined for slaughter.

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2002