Paris - A Paris court on Wednesday acquitted six people accused of negligence in the deaths of 117 young people from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of Mad Cow disease, after being treated with contaminated human growth hormone in the 1980s.

The six doctors and pharmacists on trial belonged either to the Pasteur Institute or the association France Hypophyse, which was in charge of collecting the glands containing the growth hormone from human cadavers.

The public prosecutor had demanded suspended prison sentences of up to four years for three of the defendants, including 80-year-old Fernand Dray, a former head the Pasteur Institute laboratories.

The principal defendant, former France Hypophyse head Jean-Claude Job, died in October. The trial began in February 2008.

Some 1,500 young people were treated with human growth hormone in France before the danger of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease was established. Many of them still risk contracting the illness, which is always fatal. (dpa)