(July 22, 2008)--Health officials in Corpus Christi say they should have the results in two months from tests run on the brain of a dead man who they suspect had mad cow disease.

The interim director of the Corpus Christi-Nueces County Health District, Annette Rodriguez, said the results of the tests of a brain biopsy, which are being run out of state, are due in two months.

She said the results would confirm whether the man had the disease and if it is the variant linked to mad cow.

Health officials were notified earlier this month by a Corpus Christi hospital that a patient may have had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Rodriguez said it wasn't clear where the man, whose identity was not released, may have been exposed to the disease, but he had travelled outside of the country.

There have been only three cases of the human form of mad cow disease in the entire United States, and in each case, the infection was evidently contracted outside of the country.