MADRID--Two people have died in central Spain after contracting the human form of mad cow disease, regional authorities said Monday, in what would be the first such cases in the country in three years.

"Two people are dead from Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (vCJD)," the human variant of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, said a spokeswoman for the health department in the central Castilla-Leon region.

One of them died on December 28 and the other on February 7, she said.

Spanish national radio earlier said the two were aged 26 and 41, and said they may have contracted vCJD from eating contaminated meat about 10 or 12 years ago.

The health ministry in Madrid said it would issue a statement later.

In July 2005, Spain recorded its first and, until now, only human death from suspected vCJD, when a 26-year-old man succumbed in Madrid.

More than 200 people around the world have died from vCJD, about half of them in Britain, the epicenter of BSE in the 1980s and 1990s.

Spain has been relatively unscathed by BSE, with 325 animals infected between 2000 and 2003.