A 42-year-old Italian woman was reported as the second ever case of mad cow disease in humans in the country and is currently hospitalised in desperate conditions, the ANSA news agency said.

The woman was diagnosed with a variant of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) at a Milan neurological hospital in the past months and was then transferred to a hospital in Livorno, in western Tuscany, when she was already in a coma, ANSA said.

Symptoms of the disease are neurological including confusion, problems with memory, coordination and sight as well as behavioural changes. Dementia and irregular jerking brought on involuntarily are signs of a progressive stage of the disease.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease cannot be transmitted through direct contact with the infected person, but rather through eating contaminated beef.

It is still unclear how the woman contracted the disease.

In 2009, Italy's health ministry had reported the woman's disease as a "likely variant of the CJD".

The only previous case of madcow disease in humans in Italy was reported in 2002 on the island of Sicily.

On Friday the European Union said it had nearly wiped out mad cow disease in animals in Europe.

Only 67 positive cases of mad cow disease were identified last year and the animals were old cows that could have been contaminated long ago, the EU said.

In the 1990s, panic erupted after Britain reported a link between madcow and a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.