BLOOD from a donor who developed the human form of mad cow disease has been used to treat haemophiliacs in the North-East, health chiefs confirmed yesterday.

Letters will be sent out to patients today telling them if they are among those affected.

And hospital bosses warned this could be the tip of the iceberg as more blood donors are diagnosed as victims of variant CJD, coming on top of a scandal which has seen many of the region's haemophiliacs infected with HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood.

Jim Moir, of the National Blood Service, said it emerged late last year that a donor who had given blood in 1996-7 had contracted vCJD.

Products derived from this blood would have been in use in 1997-8 until they were replaced by plasma from the United States, as a precaution against possible transmission of vCJD.

Dr Mike Laker, medical director at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, said haemophiliacs in the North-East were among those affected. He said: "This is the first of a number of scares that may come in this regard and the problem could be quite extensive.

"But we don't want to scaremonger and there is no evidence that CJD has been transmitted through blood products."

Counselling would be offered to patients who had received the blood products.

A member of the Haem-ophilia North group, whose husband has been infected with HIV and hepatitis C contracted through contaminated blood products, said they were now waiting to see who was affected by the latest scare.

She said: "At the moment it is like a lottery, nobody knows if they are going to get one of these letters."

The group is pressing the Royal Victoria Infirmary to switch all haemophiliacs onto an artificial treatment, called recombinant, following recent CJD cases in other European countries.

She said: "Recombinant has been available since 1995 so all this could have been avoided."

Only haemophiliacs who have not already been infected with HIV and hepatitis C are routinely treated with recombinant, but Dr Laker said a panel set up to review this position would make a decision in the next few weeks