In a 39-year old woman Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was diagnosed. More than twenty years prior to the first clinical symptoms she had been treated with human pituitary growth hormone. After four months of illness she died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, as was shown by the post-mortem finding of spongiform encephalopathy immunochemically positive for abnormal prion protein. The patient represented the first case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease associated with the use of human growth hormone in the Netherlands.