The spinal forms of the cysticercosis of the nervous system are rather rare. It must be emphasized, however, as Henneberg 9 already did, that the incidence of these forms can not be precisely evaluated since the intraspinal structures are not systematically examined in the necropsies; besides, the spinal symptomatology frequently is overlooked or even masked by the outstanding and severe cerebral manifestations. Rocca16 , who has the greater series of cases in this field, remarks that the spinal cord forms are four times rarer than the cerebral ones, this proportion being much alike that of neoplasms. This finding, which concerns the cysticercosis of the nervous system in a general way, could be explained by the difference of nervous mass inside the skull and the spine. Harder to explain is the great disparity between the parenchymatous cysticercosis in the brain and the spinal cord; actually, in a survey of the literature we found only 7 cases of intramedullary cysts, while the extramedullary localization was reported in 35 cases (table 1).The parasite could follow two main routes in his way to the intraspinal space: the subarachnoidal migration, by passive transport in the cerebrospinal fluid current, or the hematogenic route. The first pathway, which would imply in the secondary feature of the spinal localization, could account for the perimedullary meningeal forms, but only the blood route could apparently explain the primary intramedullary localization of the cysticercus.
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