Fears that a cluster of the debilitating brain disease vCJD had been uncovered on the east coast were today dismissed after an investigation revealed three cases were not linked.

THE State’s first victim of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) died more than six years ago.

The father of a young man who died from vCJD warned questions must be answered after it emerged two Irish victims lived within a five-mile radius of each other.