Washington ? Italian scientists have found a second form of mad cow disease that more closely resembles the human Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease than the usual cow form of the illness.

The brain-wasting diseases BSE, known as mad cow disease, and human CJD are caused by different forms of mutant proteins called prions. A number of people, mainly in England, also have suffered from what is called variant CJD, a brain disease believed to be acquired by eating meat from infected cows. No Americans have been reported with variant CJD.

Now, the team of Italian researchers reports a study of eight cows with mad cow disease found that two of them had brain damage resembling the human victims of CJD. They said the cows were infected with prions that resembled those involved in the standard form of the human disease, called sporadic CJD, not the variant caused by eating infected meat.

Salvatore Monaco, lead author of the new study, said the findings might indicate that cattle also could develop a sporadic form of the disease, but it also might be a new foodborne form of the illness.

Both the human and cattle diseases cause holes to form in the brain. The Italian researchers found that, in addition to the holes, two cows had an accumulation of amyloid plaque in their brains. Amyloid plaques are an indication of Alzheimer’s disease in humans. They have also been found in people with sporadic CJD but had not been found in cattle, the researchers said.

Mad cow disease is formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, and the Italians named the new form with amyloid plaques BASE.

“Although observed in only two cattle, the BASE phenotype could be more common than expected,” they reported.

The findings of the team led by Monaco, of the Department of Neurological and Visual Science, Policlinico G.B. Rossi, in Verona, Italy, are reported in this week’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.